Well, we went to the opera the other day. It was so good. T, in particular, really enjoyed it. He loves any kind of musical production, whereas B could take it or leave it after a point. I think that last year's opera might have been better, but this one was still very good. After the opera, at T's urging, we met the "princess". And then we briefly got close to the villain, who waved at T. I have a feeling that T is going to be my little opera/concert/musical/ballet buddy, whereas B will be like dh and just not get a lot out of it.

T also loves old musicals on TV whereas B gets bored with them within 2 minutes. The last time I put on a Gene Kelly movie, T was trying to imitate their dances. I keep meaning to look for "Singing in the Rain" for them, because after the slow intro, it gets really interesting and engaging.

Both kids have worked on some "Explode the Code" workbooks recently. Because we don't know how much B can read, we started him on a basic level to fill in any gaps and to build his confidence. I think the activity was on 'silent e' and he's apparently good with that. T is plugging away on his "Explode the Code Level 1". He really surprises me with what he can read.

T can glance at a picture with three word choices and, even though the picture is very vague, he immediately says "pat" which means that he's scanned all three words and selected the one that most closely suits the picture. We did a sentence activity but he got frustrated with the sentences so, instead of reading them, he just pointed to the sentence that had the noun that matched the picture. So, for example, a picture of rat has two sentences: "The rat is fat. The cat is fat." I ask him which sentence has the picture word and he immediately points to the rat sentence.

The issue he has, which B had and most (?) little boys have, is that he just doesn't have the patience to sit and do it. He CAN do it but he just can't keep his attention there for more than a minute; it's probably a developmental readiness issue. I think that most little boys are too wiggly and disinterested to do that sort of thing. Even with mine having freaky attention spans, neither had the focus to do workbooks for more than a minute at this age. The issue is that B wants to do workbooks and whenever he does them, T wants to do them too and he doesn't want to stop even when I can tell he should.

T gets frustrated when he can't do what B does. He puts a lot of pressure on himself and he has high expectations of himself. And, based on multiple comments he's made, he doesn't think he's very smart. I have "The Optimistic Child" and I keep meaning to read it. It's funny; you're not supposed to praise kids, but what do you do when your child thinks he's not smart? I see that a kid who isn't even 4 1/2 typically doesn't teach himself to read, but all he sees is that he's not reading books like us. He's really hard on himself. I have to read that book.

I don't know what our plans are for next week yet. It seems like the month of February has flown by!