Making Christmas Presents & Learning Style

Here Henry is painting a wooden toy he plans to give to his friend Ben for Christmas. Now that Henry is old enough to do these kinds of projects on his own, I have been encouraging the kids that it is the thought that counts and that people like homemade gifts. He has made his sister a present (in addition to buying one too) and he painting this wooden dinosaur for his friend. We plan to make some candy cane play dough next week for another one of his friends.

I was very impressed with how well he did on this project. He wanted to do a good job and was very thorough. He made sure to paint all of the wood so that there was no wood showing through. I was not expecting that from him. Whenever I ask him to color something he will scribble in something and say he is done and will only color more if I tell him he has to use a certain number of colors in his picture and then does quick scribbles of that many colors.

I am learning his "working" style and he really seems to be a kid that likes to figure things out (like puzzles - he LOVES those) and likes projects with steps. He does not care for coloring but if I give him a project where he has to glue things and follow steps he is all over that. He also loves to do worksheets. I have a variety of booklets and he seems to like them all.

He does know how to spell his name now and knows my phone #. Although, he couldn't learn it the way I taught Isabel so I had to figure out a new way to get him to learn which involved using gross motor skills.

He has down most of his letters, in fact for some reason "D" seems to be the only letter that he gets stuck on. He knows the rest when I point at them randomly. Now to get him to know them phonetically.

He also surprised me by counting to 25 from rote. I was not expecting him to do that. He does get confused about 15 and says "fiveteen" but I think he will get that figured out soon. He does seem to know most of those numbers when I point at them randomly too.

The other thing he can tell you is pretty much what any type of automobile is. He just loves anything with wheels and every time we drive anywhere he will tell me everything he sees. I never realized how many different types of vehicles we see on a 6 mile rides.