Letters with Madelyn

Since I'll have the one-on-one reading going on with Jillson in 2012, I figured I better set up something to do with Madelyn.

This wasn't hard to figure out.

Recently I have been following Karen Grunberg's blog. She is an amazing woman on many levels (her position with Google Chrome, for example, or her art therapy initiative, or the careful way she blends traditions from her Turkish upbringing with her current family's traditions, just for starters). But one thing that astounds me about her is the way she seems to make a plan (many, many plans, actually) and stick to it. And she documents it. And shares it. She has so many things going on at once. I'd love to see her calendar. 

In short, she is an inspiration.

So. In addition to stealing the "Us Right Now" idea from her, I will be stealing her "Letters with Nathaniel" project idea. I won't go into all the details here (you can read about it on Karen's site), but basically we will be focusing on a letter a week (or every two weeks). 

I think we'll eat foods that start with the letter, think of songs with the letter, do art projects with the letter, and--naturally--make a book about it: Madelyn's Big Book of Letters. Or Madelyn's Alphabet.

When I ran the idea by Madelyn, she was ecstatic. She said "Oh, Mommy! Oh, Mommy, YES! I LOVE letters. Can we do M? Can we please do M? I LOVE M."

I guess we'll start with M!

Anyway. We'll see how it goes. Karen's site has links to many other sites with game and craft and food ideas for the chosen letter, so I won't have to dig too far for ideas. I'm not sure what sort of notebook we'll use to collect our projects, but I will just figure that out as we go along.

Can't wait!