Peyton's drawings

(Click on picture to see it bigger to read the detail)
Everyday we go for a walk for about 30 minutes and see what we can discover outside. On Tuesday's & Thursday's, we are on campus because Ryne has speech therapy. So we take treasures from campus and then he comes home and draws something he sees. Today he saw a bunch of dead (fallen) leaves from some trees and an acorn. So he drew those.

Then we got home, and when we got home there was a baby gecko on our door. When I opened the door, the gecko jumped off the door and hit Peyton and ran off. We watched him for a minute before disturbing him. He was mighty cute. I wish I had the camera and a jar to catch him.

So Peyton drew the Gecko (next to the Octopus...no we didn't see an octopus)...and then he drew a tree for all the Gecko's friends, and the Gecko's home is in the hole in the grass on the bottom of the page....or as Peyton said "This is the gecko's new home with grass in a hole." Peyton said the Gecko ran off quick to his new home - in a smaller tree...then changed it to "the grass is his home and the tree is his friends home. He has lots of friends."

9/10/2008

Yesterday we found a feather on the ground...I showed Peyton how to trace it...he tried, but his didn't come out too well, but he tried. He drew these little fruit things we saw on the ground - I'm not sure what it is, I have to figure that out. It was red with cream on it and kind of marbly. He did draw the feather before tracing it, he drew a leaf, and the stick he found as a treasure on campus from the day before.

I have bought a book from a local author that the college uses to identify trees. I want to find out what trees we have in our yard and teach Peyton how to identify them. I have identified 2 trees so far, a Sweet Gum tree and a Winged Sumac tree (Rhus copallina). I will be making a nature book and keeping the leaves of the trees we identify so he can look at them and see the difference and learn to identify them easier by looking at them a lot.


Rhus copallina - Winged Sumac (photo taken from VT.edu site).

We read about 3 chapters from Tom Sawyer - he actually liked it and brought the book to me to read some more. I had him listen to some classical music while he looked at some books, we read the 'Sun Up, Sun Down' book again for the 3rd or 4th day in the row. He keeps asking why the sun has black spots and about it bubbling and having explosions, so I found some videos online on the NASA website and had him watch the informative videos about sun spots and the explosions on the sun. He watched them a few times.

I bought an abacus and we do some math problems on it everyday, and count to 100. He counted to 39 perfectly using it...then he said '39, 30' - so I have to help him with the 40, 50, 60, etc, and then he counts fine after I give him the '10' number. He did know 99, 100.

I have been teaching him sign language as well. He has the alphabet down almost perfectly. He needs to master maybe 2 letters and he has got it. Then we will work on other words...although we did some last night from a book I bought at the book store.

We do a little Spanish too. I have been teaching him

Head/Cabeza
Lips/Labia or Labios
Chin/Menton
Ear/Oreja
Eye/Ojo
Eyebrow/Seja
Hair/Pelo
Nose/Nariz

I will keep using these words until he masters it. I do use some phrases with him everday, and he has come to understand them and sometimes repeats them. He does get a little restless with Spanish, but likes all the other stuff so far.

9/8/2008 - We picked some yellow flowers in our back yard, came in and put them in a cup and have them on the table. So Peyton drew his flower after I drew one. Then I had him write his name. I saw his S was written wrong, so I printed out a sheet to have him trace some and then write some more, and he did it a lot better after that. The big thing in the middle is a leaf...we see a lot of them ;-) He had me draw an arrow on where to place each letter of his name...he was spacing them too far away.













Peyton's worksheet of tracing "S" and writing some of his own.

Peyton with his flower's (a few days after) - he put the 'vase' in front of his face like this on purpose...

9/5/2008

Peyton drew an ant hill...then made it hang like an ornament (he drew it without the hanger first, but then had to make the bee hive hang, so he made the ant hill hang).

Then he drew a "stick that I found", a leaf, an ant, an ant swimming pool and a cricket (well the cricket was drawn by me). When we were coming back from our walk, we saw some ants eating and carrying off a cricket. We watched it for about 20 minutes. On Monday he wanted to watch it again, but that was chance seeing that...since we try to prevent ants from coming around. We saw it in the driveway.








9/4/2008...Peyton drew a "mountain I just saw" (in the cloud book that we have been reading)...and a train track "I just saw"...that he had made. ;-)