Day 3 - of back to school

Grade 3. The gusto and umph we started off with on day one has definitely worn off. It took over an hour to finish two lessons of math - and it wasn't particularly hard either. But she was distracted I guess. Its almost 3 pm and she's barely gotten hold of her grammar - but ET had an appointment at the doctor today so that was her excuse. Either way she has until 4 to get most of her stuff done or we can't do any sewing. ET gets grumpy later in the evening so that puts the a damper on further mummy assisted learning.

Pre-Kindergarten. Its always nice when you find out that your 3.5 yr old has been holding out on you. For months I've been trying to determine what S knows - how much of her alphabet, how far she can count. She's had no problems with colors or shapes since she was about 2 - but the rest she's been holding out on. So a few weeks ago, I sat down with her and found out that she knows 20/26 of the capital letters... and about 6 out of 26 lower case letters (ya we need to work on that.) But the shockers that I've gotten in the last few days are these.

• she knows what her name looks like (she pretends to be oblivious!)
• she can finger spell (ASL) her name
  
• she can count to 10 without help
• she can finger count (ASL) to 6
  

so last year's goals......Goals for S for 2008-2009

(DONE) - Identify shapes
( IP ) - Identify ABCs and the letter sounds
( IP ) - Develop a larger vocabulary
(DONE) - count 1-5
(DONE) - count 1-10
(DONE) - sing simple children's songs
(DONE) - Gross Motor Skills: run, jump, hop, march, roll, sommersault, tip toe, walk backwards

We've got them covered. The only thing left on the list is to identify letters and letter sounds which we're working on now. S is a funny little girl who will learn what she wants, when she wants and how she wants and there is no way of getting around that at the moment. So we've been working slowly on the letters and finding reasons that it might be useful. She's now interested in learning to read so the letters are becoming more important to her.

Newborn-garten!
Little ET has finally entered newborn-hood instead of preemie-hood! She is 6 days past her due date and currently 7 lbs 15 oz... at 2 months old. As far as preemies go, she's pretty uneventful. She's not engaging yet but she is waking up more. She definitely has the I want it "NOW" down pat. M has decided that she will be helping me make some toys and things for ET to look at. We're going to start of with some pompoms and black and white images to put around her bed/bassinet/playpen/change area.

So there you have it 3 grades ... and I've sorta got it under control at the moment.