Itsy Bitsy Spider

9/12/2008

Today we had to clean up all the toys from outside so when the hurricane comes, it doesn't slam them against the house. So we picked up all the toys in the sand pile and rinsed them off and put them in the garage. While doing this, we saw a little hole in the sand and a spider was hiding in there...I tried to get it to come out, but I just caved it in.

I showed Peyton a spider web on our Aloe plant that we have and was explaining how spider webs work and how they are very strong. He wanted to draw the spider web on the plant, and had me draw it, but he didn't draw one himself. He drew 2 spiders...one is happy, and one is sad (he erased the sad one...he said he didn't like it because "I just like happy spiders". He gave them 8 legs, so I'm pretty impressed. He drew a couple of leaves and a tree with a lot of limbs...although I thought it was a bug we saw on the handle of a spade...but here is that bug below. I don't know what it was. It was some type of centipede, caterpillary type of thing. It was reddish, small, looked like it would bite. Had antennae's and the tail was upright in the back. So he drew antennae's on both ends...I thought one end was the tail, but he gave them both faces. ;-) Either way, it's a pretty good rendition of the bug.

Here is our aloe plant with the spider web. If I was brave, I would tear it apart in the thick looking area so he could see some cocooned bugs. I found the spider, and it looked icky (yellowish, big body - I killed it - I didn't want to because I knew it would be mushy mush - it was). I killed it because who knows if it's poisonous. If I knew it wasn't, I'd have left it alone. I showed Peyton the aloe plant and how it works. He was kind of grossed out that it was icky-gooey. He told me I had to go wash it off. Oldest child trait.

Peyton kept on drawing, which is fine, but this sketch book is really for one drawing a day, and if he wants to sketch more, I have another book for that.

The top drawing is the window - he was looking at the window and started drawing it. So first it was a window, then he drew the triangle on top of it and said it was a sailboat, then it was a window climbing sailboat, and lastly it was a Basket sailboat. ;-)

The bottom 2 drawings are a turtle...the head is at the left, the big triangle is the tail - he said he didn't have enough room for the feet. The other drawing is a rocket - it has 2 windows.
This is a blob in a frame...

We read a chapter and a half in Tom Sawyer. We are up to page 70. He likes listening to me read it. I read that you should read books above their age as it helps with imagination and helps to expand their vocabulary - and the more you read to them, the easier it will be for them to learn to read themselves. Peyton asked me what a giggle was when I came across the word. Other than that, I wonder if he's really listening. He probably likes the silly voices I do.

We did some math on the abacus. I tried a few subtraction problems on it. I must say that learning to do math on an abacus is easier than without it. He did good with his addition and subtraction. He wasn't concentrating on counting to 100, and since he was messing up so much, I went onto something else. I meant to get back to it, but we spent our 15 minutes on math.

I went over some sign language with him and then read "Things you see in the sky" and we had a lot of conversation about the weather and things you see in the sky. He was very interested in the tornado. Peyton keeps asking me where this storm is that I keep talking about - "when is the storm going to come, mom?" It should be here by tomorrow. Everything is cancelled here. Chris got out of work early today, and evacuee's are in the town. I didn't venture out today, so I don't know what it looks like out there.