Schoolwork

A few months ago I bought the entire "Your Baby Can Read" series and swore I would do it with Makaela daily, but that just hasn't happened. Matt was much better at doing the cards with her than I am (and I'm the teacher, go figure), but I have been working with her daily on letters, numbers and tracing. My motivation is two-fold: part of this comes from hopes that she will read early, thus making her days at school less stressful and the other part comes from my guilt that I need to give her as much quality time as I can now before Mia comes. Her preschool teachers are Montessori trained so they want me to practice the see, associate, and write method of learning the letters, so we have been doing that and she has been doing great. Being the social butterfly that she is (come on, she is mine and Matt's daughter), she has learned to recognize letters based on whose names start with them and her favorite things. So our alphabet recitation sounds a bit like this:

A: A is for Abby and apples

B: B is for Brooke and Bailey

C: C is for cookie monster and the crocodiles

D: D is for Donna and Daddy and Dora

E: E is for Elmo, eggies and ELEPHANTS (she gets very enthusiastic about the letter E"

F: F is for flowers

G: G is for Gavin

H: H is for Makaela Hoffman and Hailey

Once she gets to M, it basically becomes a list: M is for Makaela, Mia, Mommy, Mark, Auntie Monica...

Her tracing has come a long way too. She loves the fact that her new "puter" has a tracing pad with letters and numbers so she traces around dinner time everynight. I'm loving how it is helping her homework. I don't have to help her trace anymore.