Bribery and Missouri

We are going on a little vacation next week. I am flying. Yes, flying. I do not care for flying at all and prefer to avoid it with my entire being.

However, my sister soulmate is now living in Missouri and we are going to travel to see her next week. I am most excited. It's like going home. Comfortable, warm, friendly, and filled with love. So I will suffer on the flight. It will be just fine.

I am taking just the girls. Leaving the hubby home to care for the cats, eat sushi, and work on recording for his company. He needs the quiet house. Yes, he will miss us but he has his Iphone and Kindle to keep him warm. Oh, Asia and Uma will keep him company too.

To help Ellie understand the number of days prior to traveling I have made her a Countdown to Missouri wall. It shows a map of Missouri and 8 photos of Shelby. Each morning she can take down one picture of shelby and that will show her how many days remain. We did this came "countdown" last year for the Disney Cruise. We will do it again this year but closer to sailing. Usually 14 days before. Maybe we will do more to practice counting backward.




Ellie is eating up words. She is devouring books and yearing to read/learn more. So we are starting on first grade words. I am most confident she knows 60% of these words. However, we have never put them into consistent rotation. So yesterday she was given a stack of 35 words and will work on those for the next week. I remember when 6 cards was her max learning for the week! How she has grown!




So we have set up the word wall once again in the dining room. A word wall is simply a wall with index cards taped to it. It makes the words visual and in plain sight. She needs to be able to do two things in order to "complete the wall."

1) Point to and say each word NOT in order. Randomly selecting each word.

2) Take the cards off the wall and Fred or I will run through the flash cards with her. She must get 100% to complete the wall.


If she completes the wall by December 25 she can remove the envelope above the words and pocket 10$ for Missouri spending money.

Let me tell you the benefits of NOT TURNING THE TV ON! She is so much more interested in reading and learning. It's amazing. We play music and have 1 or 2 shows in the morning on PBS. We love Martha (Talking dog) and Word Girl. Both support reading and vocabulary. It's wonderful.