The magical ABC's

It's the time of year to think about school and preschool for next year.

Lucy and Alden are both born in October. We waited with Alden and put him in so he was one of the oldest in his class. And now I am seeing how good of a decision that was. He just flat out would have struggled in grade one a year ago! But now he is having success.

Alden said very little until he was about 3. Lucy on the other hand started talking in 2 to 3 word sentences at like 15 months.

She could count to ten by herself when she was 18 months old. (i have no idea where she picked it up as I really didn't teach it to her). She hasn't stopped talking or learning since then. Even when you think she isn't paying attention, she IS! She is eating up everything around her.

I have been wondering about putting her in kindergarten or not for a while. When we move to Raymond in a couple years, the cut off for kindergarten is September, where as in Lethbridge it is Dec. So if we already lived there she wouldn't even make the cut off. So i've been talking about it with my mom, Regan, my SIL's, and Lucy's preschool teacher (Melina).

Well this past week Melina tested Lucy to see if she was ready to go to kindergarten. She got every thing right on that test. She knew all her letters upper and lower case, can write her name and recognize it (she can write Eli, Mom and dad too) she knows her numbers up til 15, her colors, and her shapes. Melina said "she blew the test out of the water."

Last week Lucy came upstairs and said to me "mom, can you teach me to read?"

So we've started having school time at home. Every day she asks as soon as she gets up if we can work on reading. In some ways I am not really sure what to do, since when I had tried to do all this with Alden when he was this age and he HATED it. (Goes to show you how different these two kids are!)

So now each day we are having a letter of the day and making crafts with them.
A is for Alligator

B is for Bee (and bad lighting in this pic but here it is!)

Practicing her writing of B's

practicing her cutting by cutting out her B


I found a whole bunch of great blogs and sites online that give ideas (i did NOT think of these myself!!) Isn't the net great ;)

I'll keep working with Lucy and see where she wants to go with this all, no pressure, just fun and who knows maybe we'll have two reading kids this year!

School Time Blues

For the past two weeks Alden has NOT wanted to go to school. Every morning it is a fight to get him out of bed, dressed, to eat his breakfast, to do his home reading at night. Even when I pick him up he is instantly sad once he gets into the van. He has been crabby at night and wanting to go to bed at like 7pm. Not sure why. We've both asked him over and over and he just says things like my head hurts, it's too noisy at lunch at school, my stomach hurts, my back hurts. Last night dr dad checked him out. (how handy hey???) :)

He might be getting an ear infection - dr dad is going to check it again tonight (i love that he has an otoscope - that's the thing they look in your ears with) But still what is the deal with school?

Today when I was in his classroom I talked to his teacher and she said normally it boils down to one of three things.

1. Trouble with friends
2. Bullying
3. School work

She told me she doubted the last one. I stayed around for recess and watched a bit and it confirmed what I had thought before. He has his best buddy Kaden who he is constantly with and a few other boys that he plays with too. It's not that. And it's not bullying. Since someone else he knew had that happen, we've had quite a few talks about it. I am pretty positive he would tell me if it was that. And he is quite tall and big compared to a lot of kids in his class. Doubt it's that.

So his teacher called me today at lunch and told me she talked to him about what was going on. He told her that subtraction was hard and that he couldn't do it. Math?? That is like his best thing. He does math for FUN in church. We give him a list of equations and he sits and does them. But it's always addition, so perhaps he thinks he should easily get subtraction?? I don't know. But his teacher said he got all choked up when talking to her about it. So she's sending home some fun things to work on next week during the break and my mom gave me an idea about how to show subtraction using lego and his name.

I hope that working on this makes him love school again.
Cause he has LOVED school up til now!! And there's still a whole lotta school to go!!
And I want my sweet easy going stress free Alden back!!!
Poor sad guy!!

Kids books

So Alden is in Grade one right?
And he had his first library day at school.
And he picks out this book.


Of all the books in the library he picks out this.
And he wants me to read it to him as a bedtime story.
And every page he is fascinated with the things on it.
Electromagnetic waves.
Musical Instruments
X-Rays and cameras.
Electricity.
He soaks it all up, as I stumble across the words.

For a while he was having us read this encyclopedia book (i think called How things work) that my mom bought him.

It is interesting to me that a kid who is turning seven likes to sit and hear this kind of stuff. That he'd rather sit and listen to how things work and learn about how things work. Random things like washing machines, car engines, the internet, telephones and sound waves.

Yet this is the same kid who, while I was trying to get him to read me a phonics Dora book to me tonight says "so am I reading this or you, cause I don't want to?"

I think he is going to be fascinated with so many things. As soon as he learns to read. He is getting there. Each day we are working and so is his grade one teacher. And soon he will be reading.

And shortly after that, who knows.... maybe he will be reading about Electromagnetic waves all on his own.