Stranger Anxiety

A few weeks ago J and B hired a second nanny to work with Oliver twice a week so I could have some uninterrupted educational time with Matilda. This was a good idea in theory, but Oliver seemed to be terrified of her and cried pretty consistently whenever she came to work. The previous three times she worked I would pass him, asleep, over to her and get to work with Mat. When he would wake up he would be nearly inconsolable. This week I decided to wait until he woke up before passing him off. I realized that there was a pattern of him being sad when waking up somewhere different than he went to sleep (crib, carseat, etc). I'd be freaked out too if I fell asleep in my car with my friends and woke up alone in my bed. Sure enough, it worked. Oliver was completely content playing with the second nanny for the 2+ hours that she had him.

During this time, I was able to be completely focused on Mat. She ate a great snack of cantaloupe and mango with yogurt. We then did a sensory phonics lesson. Ill do my best to describe it.

Since Mat knows how to write her name, I decided to work on the -at word family. I printed out pictures and letters for the words cat, hat, rat, and bat. First i pulled a picture out of the envelope. It was a cat. I asked Mat what it was a picture of and then we sounded it out c-a-t, cat. Second I asked her what the first sound was that she heard in the word and she said "ca" and then I asked her what letter makes that sound. She replied c. Third I asked her to find the c from the three (a,t,c) letters laying in front of her. We repeated steps 2 and 3 for the a and t. Fourth we slowly said the letter sounds as I pointed to each letter, sounding out the word cat. The last step was her favorite. I had a cookie sheet with a thin film of raw red rice. We used our index fingers to write the word into the rice.

We did this "game" for 30 minutes. We worked on the 4 -at words and Mat. At the end, I gave her 10 minutes to play in the rice. We then moved outside to play in her sandbox. I continued to review out -at words in the sand and she built sand castles. It was a perfect mix.

This was a great week and I hope to have more uninterrupted lessons like this one.