D Week Report

Virtue of the Week: Delight Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 34:14
Saint of the Week: St. Dominic de Guzman
Shape of the Week: Diamond. Mostly we wore argyle and I threw my ADPi diamonds and tried to teach him to do it too.
Snacks: easy homemade donuts d week and All Souls celebration in one

Dogs! and diversity

It isn't difficult to get a really great education about dogs around here! Of course we have two dogs, Sandy and Eddie, who we spent extra time walking and playing with this week, even more than normal. But we had already chosen Will's Halloween costume which lined up quite serendipitously. 

I made this paper bag hand puppet and Will practiced identifying all the body parts on the dog and on himself. He says knee and nose and just points to all the others. Tongue is probably his favorite. He sticks his out and wags it. We used the dog puppet to act out a lot of our dog books, the favorite being Doggies by Sandra Boynton. Check out all the videos of parents and kids reading it aloud on Youtube. My barking has improved significantly. 

 In addition to the kids' dogs books, we looked at a Pedigree book that we have that shows all the different breeds sorted into their classes, working group, toy group, hunting etc. Will looked at pictures while I talked over his head about dogs' strengths and weaknesses and put a diversity message out there about how brown dogs can be really good at keeping people company and so can white dogs. Black dogs can be good protectors and so can spotted dogs. Inspired by Nurture Shock, I talked about how people are good at different things too, and that how someone looks doesn't let you know what kind of person they are. We'll try it again as he gets older.

Digging in Dirt
 Honestly, I thought my boy would be more into the sanctioned dirtiness this week. We had a good opportunity to explore digging and dirt last weekend when Brian and I changed out the summer zinnias and celoycia in the front beds for pansies and cabbages. As long as Daddy was doing it, Willie appreciated digging, but he was pretty uninterested in playing in the healthy dirt pile I left for him or exploring the shovels and tools the rest of the week.

 He thought this video was pretty cool though.

Feeding Ducks
We visited Landa Park which is very close to our house to feed the ducks. Clearly I didn't take the season into account because where there are normally hundreds of hungry geese and ducks clamoring for bread, the day we went we were hard pressed to find any takers. At first I thought we'd have to settle for feeding the Egyptian geese and minnows.

No offense yall, but your name doesn't start with the right letter

A wood duck swam over from the other side of the lake though and all was well. We ended up with pretty good lake wildlife diversity (using that d word again) and fed the Wood Duck, Muscovy, Nutria, and the geese.






I sang 5 Little Ducks and had Dad demonstrate his duck calls. All the rubber duckies made bathtime appearances this week as well. Most duck books we tried reading were pretty awful.








Favorite Books
Dig! by Andrea Zimmerman I like the writing style of this book - repetition and sometimes rhyming. Will interacted with it a lot, counting, waving, pointing out the dog, saying No.
Doggies by Sandra Boynton This is a favorite year-round. I've got to say, I'm a pretty good barker, and Will copies it sometimes. Every member of the family reads it a little differently.
Drummer Hoff by Barbara and Ed Emberly Brian was good at reading this one. I didn't care for it as much, but it's a Caldecott winner so what do I know?
Oh No, George by Chris Haughton Will's newest favorite. We used it to talk a little about temptation, regret and forgiveness. Will makes the cutest sad face as he shrugs and says oh no when George, a dog, makes bad choices including digging.
The Ugly Duckling The only duck book I could tolerate from this week. it's a classic of course. We'll hold onto it because it transitions us into eggs of E week nicely.