Four and 1/2 Years Old!

The Jack Man has officially turned 4 1/2.  Those "and a half" labels are pretty important to kids their age, and we forgot to tell him when it happened (Feb 17th).  I remembered a few days later and told him and it was cute watching him process that new exciting information. He said "so....did I turn 4 1/2 while I was playing or.....?"

Jack is doing great at preschool and is learning so much.  They just finished up learning all about the planets and before that they learned all about the arctic and built a giant igloo out of milk cartons.

They spend a lot of time talking about "special letters" (the first letter in a word) and each time they learn about something new they talk about that word's special letter and other words that start with the same letter.  As part of their special letter focus, each child has taken a turn collecting pictures of things at their homes that begin with their special letter.  Then they create a poster and present it to the class. Jack apparently did great!  He even got to use a pointer (Lincoln Log).  Love it!!

Showing the Jet he brought as a prop

Using the Lincoln Log pointer

Lots of Js at our house: Jack and Jason, Jammies, Jumping, Jelly and Juice and Jackets

We are so happy with all he is learning.  He is learning how to spell new words each day and can spell his first and last name, Charlie, Daddy, Mommy, Jason, Batman and lots of three-letter words like hat, dog, cat, car, etc.  He can also generally sound out words with some help.  He is completely into drawing right now and spends a lot of his free time making pictures for all of us.  Once he teaches himself to draw something new, he draws it over and over for weeks.  His favorite things to draw are the planets, Batman and Robin, and now police stations with fire trucks, helicopters, etc.  Even his printing has improved so much over the past few months.  So fun!

Our favorite was a few weeks ago when he learned to draw this:

Minds out of the gutter, people, these are baseball bats (see Grandpa Lang's sample on the right).

Jack is one of the few of our friends' kids who still takes a solid nap every day.  He usually sleeps 2-3 hours at home and I don't expect him to ditch that nap any time soon.  Bedtime is pretty easy at our house still - we read a book or two, each of us gives him a kiss and that's that.  Sometimes he still thinks of questions to ask us and calls us back in but many nights that's the last we hear from him.

He is really into listening to (and singing) the Armed Forces medley on our Yankee Doodle Mickey CD.  Ever since I told him that Grandpa Clayton was a Marine and therefore that was his song, he LOVES to listen to it.  He always requests "Grandpa Clayton's song," and of course the Marine part is his favorite part.  He's getting pretty good at singing the words to the Marine Corp Hymn, but still has some work to do on the others.   Observe:

That's our big shot!