The Letter 'D'

This week I questioned why I am doing these letter of the weeks a little bit.  I think I developed my husband's disease of "go big or go home."  I felt like I wasn't doing enough.  But then I remembered, Aria is only 2.  I don't need to have elaborate lesson plans.  She loves to help, get messy, read books, and do new things.  At this point, she is game to try anything I bring up.  It is just my own attitude I need to change. 

The biggest activity of the week was our David and Goliath story.  Aria also loves the story of Daniel and the lion's den.  We bought a book of that story a while back to give to her sometime and I thought 'D' week was the perfect time.  She really enjoyed getting the book and we read it every morning at breakfast.

There really aren't many foods that start with 'D,' at least not many that don't have dried, devil, or dark in front of them.  Our new try of the week was date nut bread.  I wasn't feeling trying dates plain, so we followed a recipe that came with my bread maker.  It turned out okay.  It is one of the rare foods that Aria actually liked and I didn't much care for.  Justin liked it, too.  At least it got eaten and Aria loves helping to make bread.  We also had hot dogs, but I didn't focus too much on the dog part because I didn't want her to think we were eating dogs.  Of course we did our normal pbj sandwich in the shape of a 'D,' a dog, and a dinosaur.  And, to top off the weekend, we made our first trip to Donutland as a family for donuts!  It was Aria's first donut ever.  She was very excited about the sprinkles and that is about all she ate of it. 

 At first I didn't think there were too many 'D' people that Aria knew.  We talked about Daddy starting with 'D' and Deborah, Dave, Dustin, Deb, and Dappy the cat.  Once again by random chance, Aria and I got to meet my friend Deb for a smoothie during 'D' week.  I used to teach with Deb and we had been trying to find a time to get together and it just happened to work out last week.  We started a cool thing that didn't occur to me until the end of last week.  We should pray for our people of the week.  They are all our family, friends and people who interact in our lives frequently.  It is a great way to teach Aria how to care for others.  The one night we did pray for our 'D' people, it was just really cool to hear Aria choose someone to pray for.  However, I will try to avoid prayers for Donald Duck and Dora.

Because it was 'D' week, Daddy drew pictures with Aria.  They colored dogs, ducks, dolphins, dump trucks, doors, donuts, daisies and dinosaurs.  I love watching daddy/daughter time!

I don't remember all of the exact titles of the 'D' books we checked out from the library and we've already returned them, but the one we read the most was The Ugly Duckling.  We also read about Dumpy the dump truck.  One of Aria's favorite Wild Animal Baby magazines is Dori the Dolphin, so we read that one a lot, too. 

It might have been a bit low key, but I know Aria learned things during the week and had fun.  I don't have any other goal than that.