What Mr. Boy is learning right now

After Mr. Boy was able to learn over 40 states in his United States book, Mama realized that she should take advantage of this apparent gift of memory and retention and try to spend one-on-one time with him to help him learn some basics.

Mama's main focus lately has been colors, letters, big boy things, and a Bible memory verse.

Colors are going OK. Some colors he always gets right, like orange and yellow. He has a clear favorite in blue, however, because when randomly asked what color things are, "blue" is far and away the most popular answer. When he's on a roll, he knows K-State Purple, blue, pink, orange and yellow. But that requires focus and Mr. Boy is smart, but he's got the attention span of a gnat on speed.

For letters we're employing 3 different tools and it is working so well. In his Easter basket, Mr. Boy received the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics toy and he loves to carry around his letters and consistently identifies many of his favorites (J, X, W, U, P, O, T, A, E, M, and N) correctly. Mama also got lucky at a local 'next to new' sale and found a stuffed Leap toy that has a full alphabet keypad on it's tummy. Mr. Boy loves his talking frog that comes with many letter, number, and color games, plus it is personalized with a little computer in back--so the stories and songs feature his own name. Mama also got a box of Sesame Street ABC flashcards for Mr. Boy and he loves to snuggle in her lap and discuss what all his favorite characters are doing in the pictures. Then when the cartoon side of the cards are exhausted, he tolerates going over the bold faced letters on the back very nicely. Between the 3, success is at hand!

In the world of "big boy training," Mr. Boy is getting a soft sell on giving up his bottles and diapers. Mama is very reticent about potty training and Big J doesn't want a boy who won't sleep at night, so no aggressive stances have been taken, but the books "No More Diapers for Ducky" and "No More Bottles for Bunny" are big favorites to read over and over, so hopefully some of that message will sink in? The fabulous Frog toy also has a special Potty computer chip insert thing and so a lot of the songs and stories Frog tells Mr. Boy are big boy activity related. One big boy thing Mr. Boy is doing very well is helping pick up toys, throwing away trash, and bringing Princess Baby a toy now and then. He gets a lot of praise for his big brother and big boy helper accomplishments, and seems to puff up with pride at the compliments.

Our current Bible verse is "Children obey your parents." Mr. Boy is a good little boy but he's very, very curious and busy and has a bad habit of not listening very well. So we're really trying to impart the value of obedience to him. He's learning the ABC's and colors WAY faster than obedience, but that's OK, we still adore our curly-haired Mr. Boy!