We’re about to have three readers in the house. The older boys have been reading for a while, of course, though they’re still not that excited about picking up novels. However, Dominic is now learning.

When a three year old gets mad at you because he can’t read yet, it’s probably time to start teaching him. This kid has been trying to catch up to his brothers from the day he was born and reading is no exception. He asked to read me a book the other day, then sat there and stared at the words and finally asked me how he was supposed to read it. We started lessons that night.

I still love Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for new readers. I dug it out and Dominic and I go over a lesson or two each night. He’s extremely motivated and very quick to catch on. In fact, in just the week or so that he’s been learning, he’s already started to sound out 2-3 letter words.

His excitement level is through the roof! When he successfully reads a word on his own, he jumps up, dances and screams, “I DID IT! I CAN READ IT!” He also frequently proclaims, “I love these letters!”

Soon we’ll have all readers in our house, which will be odd. No note will go unread from here on out!

I recently got a few new books from The Book Depository to use for school. Two of them were for art, including this one:

What I liked about this book first off was that it includes the little ink pads for you to get started immediately. In fact, there are blank pages inside the book so you don’t even need extra paper. And the marker for detailing is also included. Very handy.

When I pulled this book out, the boys were quite excited. Getting ink all over their fingers? Yes, please!! They tore into it immediately, not at all interested in what the book had to say. I stopped them and we worked our way through the introduction on how to use your fingers as art tools and some different techniques.

There are several sections in the book, covering how to make sealife, people, etc. Here’s a page that the kids loved:

The ink isn’t like ink at all . . . it’s more like paint on an inkpad, which makes the colors a little softer and it’s much easier to wash off than regular ink. The book is half blank or inspirational pages, but that’s fine. The kids used their own papers to work on or I never would have heard the end of the fighting!

This is what Dorian did:

This was from the sea life page. Dante’s picture was scribbled on by a certain toddler and ruined, so I didn’t get a picture of it.

Overall, the book was a lot of fun and the boys have asked to use it a couple of times since. There is also a Star Wars Thumb Doodles book, which we may need to consider soon. Since The Book Depository has free shipping around the world, we can get these books really easily.

Grab your own copy of the Thumb Doodles book on The Book Depository or Amazon. (both affiliate links!)

Weird title for January, huh? Well, here in Guatemala, the school year starts in January, so we do the same, though we do school year round. We took a month off for Christmas and New Year’s and our new year started yesterday.

Dorian is officially in Grade 4 and Dante in Grade 3. I find it really hard to believe that I have children in these grades! Dominic is doing some preschool and some kindergarten work at the moment.

To kick off the new school year, we sat down and worked out some learning goals for the new year. Some were practical. Dominic wants to learn to write his name, read all the letters and learn about police and firetrucks. Dante wants to learn origami, how to do story problems, read a chapter book and learn about Hawaii. Dorian would like to illustrate a story, learn to work with big numbers and learn about Africa and Egyptians.

However, some of their goals were kind of funny. For example, when I asked what they wanted to learn in Science, all three yelled, “Potions!” Dante and Dominic want to earn some money and Dorian would like to learn to cook lasagna. All three want to learn to swim. We are also apparently on track to get a bunny and another cat!

This year is all about practical things and timelines. We’re focusing heavily on history this year, but we’re also going to be working on skills for the future. I hope that by looking at the past, the boys will have a better idea of what they want in the future. Since they are both reading quite a bit now, we’re also doing a lot of that this year. I’ve been ordering books through The Book Depository, which ships free to Guatemala, plus we added a reading corner to their room.

Irving built the simple book rack and we found some cheap bean bags for the kids to sit in. With their books facing out like this, they spend a lot more time grabbing books to read. We also put a mini shelf by Dominic’s bed for his books.

Years ago, my youngest sister gave my boys a copy of Neil Gaiman’s The Dangerous Alphabet. It’s a kind of creepy book, but really awesome! They loved it then and we read it every night for months. Recently, the book was rediscovered and now all three of them love to hear it at bedtime. However, this time around, Dante was more interested in the illustrations than the words.

“Who made these pictures? How did he make them? Can we do that?”

And so, we decided to try some mixed media and watercolor painting techniques. I had Dante examine the images carefully and asked him to think about how certain elements were created. We decided to start with something simple.

Here is the page we used as our inspiration:

As you can see, there is a lot going on here! We didn’t want things to get too complicated, so we started with just the wall, a sidewalk and the water, plus a pole to practice some ripple effects. I told the boys they could use any colors they wanted, but to think about the effect they wanted their picture to have.

This is the one that I did. Please ignore the sawdust bits on the image, we’re renovating, heh. More on that in a future post.

Here is Dorian’s picture. He wasn’t as into it as the rest of us, but he had fun with his own blend of colors. He decided not to use pen to highlight things. Since the project was done in three stages, he was pretty bored by the end of it.

Here is Dante’s. He had a little difficulty being patient enough to wait until his paint dried, but he did a good job!

Of course, Dominic wanted to get in on the action, too! He had a lot of fun and I love the way this turned out.

All four paintings together:

Over the next while, we’ll be trying different techniques and then working our way up to doing a full size painting of a scene inspired by the book.