visits and birthdays

So far none of my kids have had birthdays during the school year. Mine was the first one coming up. We do a calendar every morning where we go over the date and day of the week—I can’t tell how much they understand what we’re doing but they can repeat it and point at the right words as they say them (random pointing still happens often). So I made a picture of a birthday cake and put it up on the calendar. What is that? I asked. Cake! It’s my birthday! Many of the kids responded. No, it will be my birthday on Tuesday, I corrected. So we had lots of discussion about what happens for birthdays and if we like cake and friends coming over. If I listened to them they were all coming to my house on my birthday but I thought we would have our party at school…

I also took in a picture of my family and told them that my mom was coming to visit. They were so excited and everyone wanted to meet mom. I put the picture up on the Friday she would be here and told them that she wanted to come and meet them and see what they did all day at school. Each day after that we counted down to the two big happenings before easter break. I think the attention spans during group time were getting a little bit longer (though I really try not to push it too much)