Ethan and Avery Antics

Another journal entry...

The Teacher and His All -Too Eager Student

A few Sundays ago Ethan and Avery snuck into Nana and Papa's room while Papa was getting ready for church. Papa was in the bathroom shaving when he heard them. Just as he was about to check on them...

Ethan: "No, Avery, don't do that!"

Papa (thinking): "Oh good, Ethan will keep her out of mischief."

A moment later...

Ethan: "Look Avery, you do it like this!"

The Lesson of the day...The correct way to climb on the bed and jump off the end.

This picture was "posed". I did NOT catch them and THEN run for the camera! We have had enough trips to the ER! They sure are happy to be allowed to be on the big bed for a picture though!

The Story about Ethan!

Setting: Monday night family home evening...The lesson is on how to say I'm sorry when we make a wrong choice.

First we talked about what some choices we make sometimes that are not good. Ethan listed, pushing Avery, and biting (he has a thing with coming up behind us and biting our rears, I told you he was weird). I started telling a story about a little boy named Travis and his friend Matthew. Ethan wanted to me to change the boy Travis to him and call him Ethan. So, I did. So the story goes like this.

Ethan and Matthew were really good friends. One day Ethan went to Matthew's house to play. Ethan really liked all of Matthew's toys, and decided that he wanted to borrow some, so he put a few toys in his pocket. The story goes on to say how he took the toys without asking and that was a wrong choice. And it made Ethan feel bad because he was not honest with his friend. Anyway, as I went on telling the story Ethan interrupted me and said " That boy is Ethan Hughes NOT Ethan Conn OK?" Ethan Hughes is Ethan's best friend, poor guy! (Picture below).

So he went from wanting the story to be about him to THAT BOY IS NOT ME. After laughing hysterically for a few minutes, I was actually very impressed by how much he listened and understood about the story. I remember Brendan (Ethan's uncle) would always shift blame, during family prayer when we would coach him what to say, ie, "Please bless Brendan to be good", he would always change the name to Jessica.

A Bendable Stem!!!

I started homeschooling Ethan for preschool a few weeks ago. I found a really great curriculum online (and it's free). It's perfect for our schedule, and Ethan really likes it so far. This week our theme was Jungles, and our vocabulary word is VINES. The definition of a vine...Vines are plants with long bendable stems; they grow along the ground or climb up trees. We put everything we learn each day on a "learning poster", and each day we review what we learned the day before and then teach a new concept. You never really know how much kids are learning until the surprise you.

Yesterday Ethan was playing in the backyard in his sand box, and then he started collecting grass, and branches, and sticks and stuffing them into his cozy coupe. All of a sudden, and I have never seen him so excited. He runs up to me with a long green stem and says, "Mommy, I found a bendable stem". He was so excited that he found a "vine", and I was so proud of him for recognizing it.

I decided to homeschool him for preschool to save money at first, and I am loving it. I have so much fun bonding with him, and he is such a smart kid. He is always surprising me with how much he ALREADY knows.