Taking our studies outside

We have been blessed with wonderful weather here. Lately the weather has been it's normal Hawaii weather (raining for five min., then sunny for twenty). Since the sun is out and gracing us with its warm presence, we decided to take our studies outside.

Charlotte just seems to be soaking up anything and everything that passes her way. I have decided to utilize this moment in her growth to push on her as much knowledge as I can. This seems to be such a critical time for her with her elementary learning, so it has become a very important task of ours to spend as much time with her teaching her everything I possibly can.

My husband and I have even talked a bit about teaching her a second language. I think I would have to leave that to my husband being as I still have yet to master proper English, and my Italian is no where what it use to be when I was growing up. Chase on the other hand, is magnificent in the English language, as well as Russian, German, Spanish, and Swahili.

So for right now, we will stick with numbers, writing, and reading - in English of course. Maybe once Chase comes home from his underway he can begin teaching her a second language.

We have been working on recognizing numbers, and distributing the proper amount into each assigned number. Charlotte has proven to be a champ at this! We have perfected this all the way up to 17. So far so good!

We have also been working on our writing and reading. She has pretty much mastered writing each letter of the alphabet with just a tiny help from mom.

While William was working on his never ending circles....

Charlotte and I began using the sidewalk and chalk as our pen and paper to scribble our letters on.

Charlotte in the process of writing her "A"...

... and perfecting her lower case "b".

I have encountered one problem with teaching her to write her letters. As you can see here as she writes her "P", she can not help but turn it into a happy face or some sort of person....

This goes for all the following letters -a, b, c, d, g, o, p, q, R, u, and y.

I love the fact that she loves to draw so much. Its just a little sad that when she is done writing half the alphabet, you can't recognize the letters because they have grown hair, ears, eyes, noses, mouths, arms, legs, and some times belly buttons (Which we call"Peek holes" in this house thanks to when Jordan was much younger).

While outside lately, we have taken to picking flowers for the house as well. The hibiscus have been growing all around our house like a weed. It is so gorgeous! The mix of the bright red, yellow, and orange big petaled flowers is so amazingly potent with color. It is just beautiful.

Some shots of the bright red hibiscus that is growing out our front door.