Friday Focus: Tarzan

Wow, I went back and looked at the last focus I did on Tarzan, and he looks so much older in just a couple months! He's saying I instead of me now, and counting in the right order, and working on workbooks and patterning and all kinds of big kid stuff.

Since O'Malley is getting ready for kindergarten, I'm doing more work on writing with him. I really think Tarzan is not to the stage where it's necessary- in six months it would be a lot easier and more natural for him. But he WANTS to right now, to be the same as O'Malley, and so we're going with it. I had gotten him a workbook for ages 3-5 and he blew through the first 30 pages or so pretty easily. Now we're getting to parts that have concepts he really doesn't understand so well yet, so we're doing concrete patterning and sorting and talking through the ideas before we go back to the book. He's chomping at the bit to get back to it- he doesn't think that the "playing" we do is as good as the "important work" in the books. I would disagree. :) In fact I think it's more important. But hey, we work with their interests, so there you go.

I put up the big play yard we have and let the older ones do their patterning in there so the babies couldn't eat the pieces. They felt super cool and had lots of fun.

I've started a ticket system with O'Malley, Tarzan, and Roo for their work. When they listen to books or complete a task or get some writing done, they get to put a ticket in the jar. On Thursday afternoons we count all the tickets, and for every five they have, they get to pull an activity out of another jar we made. Then we do all that stuff on Friday. Yellow slips are snacks and orange ones are activities. They are loving it.


Example of one Friday's treats: Make popsicles, play dress up, watercolors, and sidewalk chalk. They earned 23 tickets that week so 3 went back in the jar toward next week. I try to hand them out pretty liberally so they feel productive. :)

One week we drew the activity of making masks from paper plates. They had a really great time with that one. I am so terrible at artsy stuff like that, but I managed to make a Batman for Tarzan and something or other for O'Malley. It was fun.


He's very into Toy Story right now- lots of Buzz and Woody. My kids loved it last year and asked for a lot of the figures for Christmas, so we have a ton. It's really fun to pretend you're Andy and do creative things with all the toys. We've been doing some of that too- lots of Potato Head and silliness. I'll have to get some pictures to put up. And also buy the last of the ones we NEED with some of the supply fee. They're wanting a Bullseye.

And in other lists of things he wants, a sister is at the top right now. He has mentioned several times that he thinks he'll be getting one soon. :) No news on the home front, but hey, a guy can dream!