Tot School Date With Soph

It's only about 45 minutes every other week, but it's so nice to have a guaranteed one-on-one date with my girl. Craig takes Will to karate every other week (we rotate) and I get some uninterrupted play time and conversation with Soph. It's the only time I get the completely peaceful interactions I enjoyed so much with Will at this age.

This particular evening, I was going to let her work on cutting with scissors. So I got out some construction paper and drew a straight line down the shorter side of the paper. I helped her position her scissors in hand and turn them the right way to cut down the line. But once she saw the marker, she much preferred to just draw a bunch of her own lines instead. :) (Notice "baby" is right beside her. She's suddenly very attached to "baby".)
It seems it is more natural for her to use right hand for scissors, but most often we see her use her left for drawing, coloring and eating with silverware. Is it possible that we have TWO lefty children?? I also had to continue to turn her wrist so that her thumb was on top (instead of on bottom as shown here) when cutting. Most of the time when she cuts, she just snips little corners and pieces and makes a sort of confetti. ;)

After requesting to have the marker back, I held her hand while helping her to write her name while we practiced saying the letters aloud.

And then she spent some time drawing straight lines and circles all over the paper. Hmm... she's holding the marker in her right hand here. That is rare.

Next, I got out Will's wooden, Lakeshore, patterning game. She loved this and loved touching and finding all the shapes. When she finished a row, I said the pattern aloud to her so she could hear the repetition too. This was a big hit.

We took some time to "wrap" daddy's birthday gifts for the next day.

And then she set the table for me while I put the final touches on dinner.

And after that, she went back to the pattern game until daddy and Will returned home and we all washed hands for dinner.