A World of Learning

 Merry Christmas, everyone! I love this time of year, and I enjoy getting gifts for the students that I tutor. It's so much fun surprising them, and I always do my best to choose something that will be perfect for each child.  This year, I purchased 5 gifts - two for Elsie and Elliot, one for Macie, and one for Ruby and her baby sister, Dayla. I didn't want the little one to be left out.  For Ruby and Dayla, I chose some stuffed animals with the big sparkly eyes. I think they liked them. They're so young, and they don't have a very long attention span, especially Dayla.         For Macie, it was easy to choose a gift. She always wears a Minecraft hat, and she had mentioned that her dad gives her "Kinder Eggs" and she really loves it. So I got her a Minecraft shirt and some Kinder Eggs. She was really happy.                                   And, for Elsie and...

 I found a book series by Kate DiCamillo about a pig named Mercy Watson and all the adventures she has! The second grade girl loves them so much that, even though I had the first three books in the series and was working my way up, she went to the library and got the rest of them!  Now I have a new second grade girl, so I'm going to try the books with her. Hopefully she'll like them just as much!

 Tutoring a three-year-old, I try to play as many alphabet learning games as I can in a session, keeping her attention for the one-hour session. One of the games we play to help her learn her letters is a board game with dice. It involves rolling one die on your turn, moving forward the number of spaces on your die, and then picking a piece of construction paper with a letter on it. Then you need to be able to say what letter it is. If you get it right, you either get to move forward one space or two, depending on what the space you're on says. The first one to get to finish wins. But the game goes by so fast, I'm thinking of creating another game board that has more spaces on it so it will last longer. Also, the little girl is getting so good at the letters I have written on the pieces of paper, I'm going to have to replace them with letters that are a little more of a challenge.