B is for Basketball

A is for Autumn, which means new experiences for R and the kids.



This week R starting holding "school" sessions with Scotty during Katie's afternoon nap. They do various crafts, like doing crayon rubbings of leaves, making "ant cars" from celery or making a dragon puppet from a paper bag. Scott told R, "I didn't know you could make a dragon!" He was quite impressed. The experience has been great so far, because it gives the pair of them some much-needed, quality "Mommy-Scotty Time".



Each day they also work on writing the letters of the alphabet. Scott is very, very particular about writing each letter just perfectly, so it is great that they have a dry-erase writing tablet that allows him to fix any mistakes. When he makes a mistake writing on paper he tends to despair very quickly. The tablet is also nice because he can write really large letters, rather than the small letters in his workbook. They did capital 'A' on Monday, added lowercase 'a' on Tuesday, and then went on to capital 'B' on Wednesday.



B is for Basketball class, which also started this week. This is part of a conscious choice we made to put him in athletic courses rather than pre-school. This boy THRIVES on physical activity and games, and we figured he would benefit most from the chance to get out and run with other kids. R has been really impressed with the quality of the courses at Vecova (fka the VRRI), which are really focused on skill development and playing the sport. In our experience, the YMCA classes are more about singing songs and freeplay, which can frustrate Scott a little bit, because he just wants to play the sport itself.



When this first class ended Scott couldn't believe the 45 minutes had already passed. He could have stayed all day, I'm sure. He was on a countdown until the class started, and now he can't wait to go back. Afterwards, R took him to the store and let him pick out a size 5 basketball, paid for with the money they'd just received from returning a big bag of bottles to the Vecova depot. The leftover change went to his "Buzz Lightyear" savings fund that he keeps in his black zippered "Bendy Em" wristband in his room.



This is the last September before he starts school for real. Gasp.