Teachable Moments

The other night, lil man decided he wanted to play with daddy's bank- which is broken right now. He took it over to the dining room table and proceeded to dump dirty coins all over it. He was sitting and practicing putting it back in the slot while I finished up dishes.

This was one of those nights that I didn't really feel like we needed a game like this. I would have been content to get out a puzzle, sit of the floor and build. Instead, I sat and watched him dump coins all over the table, chairs and floor. Of course, the dogs thought the coins were food and proceeded to sniff under my feet, annoying the heck out of me.

While I was sitting there, I thought, "Cheri! What are you thinking? This is an opportunity to teach lil man something." Having taught all day, there are times I don't want to teach. I simply want to be. This was one of those days but I sloughed off that feeling and proceeded to teach my son about coins. He already knows what a quarter is. I figured the other silver coins would be confusing- welcome, the lowly penny.

I showed E what a penny was and said it means 1 (no need for cents or anything- he's 2. That will come in time). I asked him to find me some pennies.

 I got some depth perception photography done & pretty good too! Sorry, I've been struggling with it for a while. Now I can continue my photo tutorial!

With all the coins on the table and a bunch of pennies, this could take all night... yep. I was a bad mom and thought that only to refuse it and push it out of my mind.  Let's find pennies!!!!

"Momma, I found one! Yay I did it!"

That's what he says when he does something right. Isn't he the cutest thing ever? I love it. Such enthusiasm and excitement should we all have!

Upon finding the pennies, he put them into the bank, like a good lil boy. Only he had to do so by saying: "It goes in there" while putting the penny into the bank deposit slot.

It goes in here.

We got everything put away and he decided to do it again. Oh boy! I was getting worn out. Time to make a new game out of this... just please don't put your fingers in your nose or mouth because they are germ filled at this point. What now?

I decided that he would have to give me the pennies in my hand. We did this for a minute when a moment struck. Duh, Cheri! Count them into groups of 10 and have him put them away. It gives us a chance to practice counting to 10- again. For some reason, he's struggling with 8, 9, 10. He's done it before without a problem, but now he likes to repeat 6 and 7 over and over. So, we proceeded to count pennies in groups of 10. It was very successful until he decided to fit 10 pennies in his hand only to have 4 fall out each time and he'd start over from 1. We'll get there one day. He's 2. He knows what the letters B, D, E are and will point them out whenever we see them. We're getting somewhere. Is he a genius, no, but he's learning and that's what I care about.

So, back to groups of 10. This took us FOREVER.... okay, not really as we'd still be doing this. It took a while and I was okay because he was learning and was I really doing anything? No. It did end up being quite fun and reminded me to take advantage of those teachable moments no matter how tired I am!