ABC's and 123's

We pulled down our Melissa & Doug magnetic letters and numbers today. Thomas practiced place values, setting up big long numbers and then trying to read them to me. He has been very fascinated with thousands lately. He was looking at a timeline in his science book the other day and asked me what every year was called 1800, 1850, 1900, 2013, etc. Ever since then he has noticed the year on calendars and in books and wants me to tell him what year certain things happened, like when I was born, when we bought our house, what year he will be 10 years old. He doesn't seem so interested in time, just numbers that have 4 digits.

Jacob decided to play with letters. He puts random letters together and asks, "What does this spell?" Of course, most of the time it doesn't spell anything so I spelled a few words for him to sound out. He did amazingly well. He was so proud of himself for sounding out 3- and 4- letter words he started jumping up and down yelling, "I CAN READ!" When it was time for me to make dinner I got out some flash cards with sight words for him to copy. He would find each of the letters that matched the card and then try to sound them out himself.

Dinner was almost ready and I needed the table cleared off so the boys worked together to put the letters and numbers on the refrigerator - in order, no less. Thomas even figured out there was a color pattern he needed to follow to make all of the 2 digit numbers match colors. He was very proud of himself when he "cracked the code!"