Adam at Play

Adam's play has really evolved. He's quite ready for lots of "big kid" toys like:

Lego

He got a few sets for Christmas, which was great. He could, for the most part, even follow the instructions and do all the construction with just a little help from Mom or Dad.

Lite Brite

Another hit from Christmas. Lite Brite is even better than when I was a kid. The pegs stay in really well, so we're not finding them all over the house and then half the fun for Adam is that he gets to remove the pieces with pliers.

Quadrilla marble run,

which he shares quite nicely with Naomi and with the many adults who also like playing. Notice the construction paper funnel. That was Adam's idea.

recombinations of toys.

Here, he has taped some cardboard strips and train tracks to the pantry. 

and then combined those with off-the-shelf marble run components.

Arts and Crafts

To my surprise, Adam is also showing quite an interest in arts and crafts, which is, I think being well-encouraged at school, even though it's not really our thing. Part of our weekday routine is that, before I open the apartment door on our way home from the daycare pickup, I ask Adam and Naomi what they plan to do after tidying their shoes and washing their hands. I have found it very helpful for each of them to have a constructive activity in mind, otherwise they default to antagonising each other as soon as I have turned my attention (away from them) to preparing dinner. Anyway. Often, Adam has a craft in mind. Like the day he asked to decorate paper eggs. And why not? It took me all of two minutes to cut up some cardboard from the recycling box and plop a bin of markers on the table. It kept both Naomi and Adam occupied while dinner shaped up. 

Arts and crafts are also popular whenever there is a special occasion. Because special occasions call for decorations, which I have to say is quite delightful. I often have more fun than I expected when I get involved to "help." I can't figure out where the pics are but we made a pretty kick-ass mixed-media Chinese New Year decoration. I should also take a picture of the mixed-media ocean-side forest that bedecks the wall above his pillow.

Adam is also really into board games and card games - notably War, Uno, Snakes and Ladders,

checkers

on a home-made board, and 

chess

on the upgrade home-made board. We have a real one but this one is labelled for quick set-up. Adam often plays solo - generating helpmates in which black trounces white. He also enjoys solving and creating simple chess puzzles. The interest in chess is of great delight to Gung-Gung. 

 Of course, 

reading

- any time, anywhere. This is at a party, for example. I've also seen him reading at the daycare playground. He didn't actually mention it until months after the fact, but he even received his class's literacy award at a school assembly, where they presented a literacy award, a citizenship award, and a leadership award for each class. Very serious about reading. 

very serious about reading.

and now about writing, which was a spectator event until a couple of months ago. Luckily, the writing is usually in appropriate locations like on paper and chalkboards. Which isn't to say we don't find writing all over the house. It's just that he's taped little notes all over the place, labelling things like the finish line for races.

We do play outside too, but it's rare that I have my camera at hand because I've usually got all three kiddos with me. Earlier in the season, Adam tried riding his bike without training wheels. But he wanted them back on right away. He just finished up two 13-week sessions of skating lessons, so I think Dion is hoping he'll try hockey next year. He is signed up for soccer for the first time this summer.

Uh, about that ...

After reading Aesop's The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, Adam declared that the farmer who killed the goose was a "bad farmer because farmers are not supposed to kill animals."

Reading! but not really writing

Warning: this whole post gets a mom-brag alert. Move along if you're not in the mood.

Adam is kinda reading. We've known for a while that he has whole-word recognition of many (100s of?) familiar words and phrases, notably streets and signs, subway stations, countries, food packaging, and words from his books. He's also been doing a decent job at guessing (often correctly) at a lot of words by sounding out short ones or keying in on the first few and last few letters of a long one or identifying roots.

For example, Dr. Lindzon was a little surprised when Adam guessed that the sticker he gave him said "Buffalo" when in fact it said "Beautiful." I didn't know he'd even heard of a buffalo. He's also mistaken "peau" for "Peru" but he got Millwood on his first try. I'm sure Dion has more examples, too. And yes, he has his favourite books all but memorised: he reads them to the babies (dolls), Olga, and Naomi all the time. But he has the meaning, too, because he makes "good" mistakes, e.g., replacing pronouns with the appropriate proper noun, using appropriate synonyms, never messing up the part of speech.

Still, I was a little surprised when he had memorised / could read back one of his birthday cards when I read it to him only once. So, when the next one arrived, I let him try it without any assistance. And he read thusly:

Adam's version	Original text
Hey, Birthday Boy	Hey, Birthday Boy
You're growing up to be fast,	You're growing up fast,
So get seat for something	So get set for some fun
Help your birthday's a [indiscernible]	Hope your birthday's a blast!

That's pretty good, I think.

He's also into figuring out how to spell familiar words. And he's on to the trickiness of spelling. For example, he's asked whether the letter at the end of cookie is e or y and whether a letter should be J or G, S or C, C or K. He also knows some letter combinations, e.g., CH and TH. Again, there are some amusing guesses. He thought drink (or some other dr-word) started with a J.

His books that are in heavy rotation: Llama Llama Mad at Mama (Dewdney), Little Pea (Crouse-Rosenthal), Duck in a Truck (Alborough), David Gets in Trouble (Shannon), Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Viorst), I'm A Big Brother (blanking), Christmas Carols (STILL), and several Robert Munsch books.

But. He's not into writing (or drawing or coloring) for himself, though he is an enthusiastic spectator and actually he's a mini writing-drill-seargent. The only thing he ever writes is 1 - the numeral one. Sometimes he makes circles instead of random scribbling. And it's not that he lacks the deterity for writing. Trust me. You do not want to set him loose in your house with a screwdriver.

However, I did discover this morning that he had scribbled on a patch of wall; luckily, it was done in pencil. He even had the temerity to ask me to find him a pencil to do more writing on the wall. He got a talking to. Who knows if it'll work? This is the proverbial coming around of my going around as a preschooler. I had a compulsion to colour on the walls and furniture in crayon. I remember the angel and devil on my shoulders. I knew I would be punished. But I also knew that no punishment could outweigh the sheer joy of putting crayon to wall. I remember my parents scrubbing my bedroom for hours as we prepared to move when I was six. I need some kind of concluding sentence about Adam but I'm blocked. Leave your suggestions in the comments.