The ‘workbooks’ which we call puzzle books that my neighbor gave us are fascinating to the girls. Faith did about 10 pages in the phonics one this morning before she started to disintegrate into simply wantinmg to color the pictures randomly. At that point, I told her the puzzle book was to do puzzles and the color book was for coloring… I feel odd about that (she got kinda upset and wanted to keep coloring in rthe puzzle book and doing the puzzles) but at the same time, she had been doing worksheets for nearly an hour by her own choice, and I know she’d later regret it because they wouldn’t be do-able anymore once she’d colored in the ‘wrong’ (according to the instructions) pictures. She claimed she wanted to ‘keep doing more puzzles’ but the two more chances I gave her she just started coloring randomly, so I put the book up. Like I said, she was not pleased but also not too mad. Had she been really peeved I would have figured something else out. I offered another coloring book but that of course was not what she wanted.

I guess it’s like playing at the park, or any other wholesome activity that a child has continued beyond a coherent point… sometimes you have to guide them to quit even when they don’t really want to. Still I feel like I could have done differently. Hmm.

On another note, Abby is really wanting to get into this too because she sees Faith having fun with it. She doesn’t seem to have the fine muscle control to make small precise strokes but she knows all the uppercase letters by sight (!) How did they get all this? Sponges, they are little sponges…