January Family Academy

I'm behind in recording our activities...here are some of the things we've been working on:

We focused a bunch of activities around gingerbread cookies. Here the kids are putting mini m&m's on their peanut butter-covered gingerbread sandwiches.

Jay learned to count by two's with gingerbread and I put them to the song of "Jack and Jill." We read Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby books and they loved them.

I printed out a bunch of gingerbread printables from makinglearningfun.com. We did number recognition for Kay, number spelling for Jay, color-by-number addition with gingerbreadmen, shape matching with gingerbreadmen, etc.

We also started counting by fives to the song "Ten Little Indians."

Jay is getting really good at reading the calendar so we learned a song about the months of the year to "Three Blind Mice." They both sing the days of the week song (Clementine) ALL THE TIME!

Our green rice sensory box got a lot of use. I put gingerbread buttons in it along with other winter items and they scooped and played to their hearts content :)

Jay decided to write all the numbers from 1 to 100. He's gotten really good at counting and reading the time on the clock. This was something he did all on his own. I love self-learning! Since he loves clocks he did them circular.

We had a great time visiting with cousins and aunts and uncles. I found some fun manipulatives at a scrapbook outlet. Here they are sorting by size and object and making them stand in the carpet.

We went sledding and enjoyed snow and family when we visited Utah.

Jay was thrilled to see and get inside a real helicopter at the SLC children's museum. We went there to celebrate his birthday with their uncles and Grandma.

He also celebrated his birthday at home with lots of flying fun.

This is a photo Jay took of his beloved "chick."

Jay continues with his violin lessons and learned f# for his first finger-on-the-string note.

Here he is teaching Jumbo, who happens to also be a great student.

Jay can read several verses in the scriptures all by himself now. I made him a scripture carrier and he loves to take it to church and help in his class by reading them.

The numbers that Kay is playing with have been a lot of fun-a great manipulative treat!

I'm realizing I don't have many photos of Kay. She has been working on potty training, learning her shapes, and surprised me by knowing all of her uppercase alphabet! She also started speaking in complete sentences at the first of January-she sounds so grown up now!

She's loving her baby things from Christmas and is starting to realize what having a new baby at our house means (I think).

She likes to climb into the infant car seat. She is a little tease!

We also had fun doing snowman activities. Here we made rice krispie snowmen. It was great for Jay to touch something sticky!

Kay loves to sing and play the piano. She sets up concerts like this:

I often forget to take photos of the kids doing our everyday learning, but I love the record of them growing and learning!

Learning to Love knowledge from the Lord

I love it when I come across something that focuses my efforts. Today I read an article from our church that is called, "Learning to Love Learning." I love the opening:

The overarching purpose of Heavenly Father’s great plan of happiness is to provide His spirit children with opportunities to learn. The Atonement of Jesus Christ and the agency afforded to all of the Father’s children through the Redeemer’s infinite and eternal sacrifice are divinely designed to facilitate our learning. The Savior said, “Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me” (D&C 19:23).

We are assisted in learning of and listening to the words of Christ by the Holy Ghost, even the third member of the Godhead. The Holy Ghost reveals and witnesses the truth of all things and brings all things to our remembrance (see John 14:26, 16:13; Moroni 10:5; D&C 39:6). The Holy Ghost is the teacher who kindles within us an abiding love of and for learning.

In our journey to learn we can become distracted. This is a good reminder of what knowledge is for:

A hierarchy of importance exists among the things you and I can learn. Indeed, all learning is not equally important. The Apostle Paul taught this truth in his second epistle to Timothy as he warned that in the latter days many people would be “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

I know that I will return to this article again as I try to keep us on track:

You and I are here on the earth to prepare for eternity, to learn how to learn, to learn things that are temporally important and eternally essential, and to assist others in learning wisdom and truth (see D&C 97:1). Understanding who we are, where we came from, and why we are on the earth places upon each of us a great responsibility both to learn how to learn and to learn to love learning.