7/10/2013

Monthly Miles Memo #66

Filed under: — Aprille @ 2:05 pm

My special Miles,

I think one of my favorite aspects of you is your love of learning.  The other day you showed me a game you’d been playing on the PBS website, and I think it was actually intended for kids a bit older than you.  It was a number line game, and your task was to place a number correctly on the line before your computer-opponent.  You were flying through that thing.  It wasn’t only small numbers, either.  It really impressed me how you were clearly visualizing the numbers, positioning them in relationship to each other, moving forward and backward with equal finesse.

You’ve also been reading a lot, mostly listening to stories that your dad or I read to you, but trying some on your own as well.  We signed up for the library’s summer reading program, which has been a great motivator for you.  You love filling in your reading chart with stickers and doing “shovel activities,” which are special tasks the library staff have suggested to supplement the reading time.  We’re going to the Natural History Museum today, which will fulfill a shovel activity, and with one more reading stint, you’ll be at Prize Level 2.

Prize Level 1, which you reached about three days after starting the program, was a huge incentive for you, because one of the prizes was a coupon for Noodles & Company.  You were so excited to have earned that, since it’s your favorite restaurant, and also because you worked for it.  We eat at Noodles & Company a lot, since it’s in the same building as your dad’s office, and it’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser for you and your brother.  I have to admit, your dad and I get a bit tired of it, but it does have a decent variety of menu options.  We’re also not above getting take-out from there and letting you eat it while we get something a little more exciting.

The summer garden season might perk up your diet a bit.  The other night you scarfed down about a pint of raspberries from our bush, and as the carrots mature, I hope you’ll want to eat some of those, too.  You helped plant them, so hopefully that same sense of accomplishment that got you worked up about the Noodles & Company meal will translate into carrot-eating.

Summer school has been going well so far.  You finished your Get Ready for Kindergarten class with aplomb.  You worked a lot on writing letters and numbers, learning in a setting more structured than the laissez-faire world of Montessori preschool.  You ate snacks every day out of your lunch box, which gives me hope that you’ll be able to do the same at lunch time in kindergarten.  This week you started a 4-week drum class, which you seem to be enjoying so far.

Yesterday, we decided to go out for some frozen yogurt.  As usual, we arrived at our destination before the song we’d been listening to ended.  Our always-in-rotation playlist is the songs from Family Folk Machine, our choir (that has made for some really long drives).  As usual, you insisted that we stay and listen to the entire song.   We were close enough to the end that I conceded.  As we sat, listening to “The Iowa Waltz,” who should walk by but Jean, our choir director.  You were so excited and proud when I told her why we were just sitting in the car.  I think she got a kick out of how much you like choir.  We’ve signed up for next season already.  I think it’ll be nice for you to return to something familiar with old friends around the same time you start at your new school.

You got a new bike this month, and you’re getting pretty good at zipping around.  It has a hideous sumo wrestler horn, which of course you love, and of course you honk it to the point of poor cycling.  At least you wear a helmet.  The weather has been kind of horrible, either too hot or too rainy to do much outside, but I’m hopeful that you’ll have some good biking opportunities before the summer ends.

Summer is just the best, isn’t it?  The raspberry-picking from the other night turned into some impromptu gardening, which turned into digging up carrots, which turned into your brother wanting to eat them, which turned into cleaning them with the hose, which naturally turned into a spontaneous water fight.  You and Tobin and I were all in our regular clothes, with no towels or anything, and we all got soaked.  I think that’s the most fun afternoon I’ve had in a long time.

We have lots more fun ahead of us before the summer is out, including a trip to Chicago and swimming lessons.  I need to squeeze all the Miles time I can, because next month, you’ll start all-day school for the first time.  I can hardly believe that, but here we are.

Have a great rest of the summer, sweet Scoop.

Love,

Mommy

Unholy unions

Filed under: — Aprille @ 12:36 pm

Tobin and I were in the living room while Miles finished up his lunch.

M:  Oops.

A:  What’s up?  Do you need help?

M:  My lemonade got in the syrup, so it’s pretty confusing.

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