What an absolute joy it is to watch your babies grow and learn. My little girl, Yeyda, has been working on getting her ABCs down for well over a year. She does pretty good identifying the ASL version of the alphabet and will do the signs herself on occasion. For the longest time though she did what I came to call the “Yeyda-bet”. She would sing “W-X-Y-and Z” and complete the song. She would fight trying to start from A-B-C so I didn’t push too hard or I would get frustrated.
Well, after several weeks of different ones in the family offering to sing the ABCs with her she finally got it. Spontaneously, without prompting she just started singing. She went from A to Z without missing a letter and even got the end right! I was so proud. That happened this past Wednesday, October 28 – 16 days short of her third birthday.
Yesterday she surprised me again. I gave her her MagnaDoodle to play with and he immediately took it and wrote and “S” on the screen. She asked, “Momma, is this an S?” When I saw it I just had to take a picture.
She is getting better at counting and can make it to 13. With a bit of encouragement she can make it to 20. There is a short that they used to show on Disney Channel during the morning cartoons called “Choo-Choo Soul with Genevieve”. The lady sings a catchy number song that Yeyda loves and she has used that with much success to learn her numbers. We have been trying some simple math equations, but she loses interest quickly.
The other thing she said the other night to her dad that made me believe that now I can really hit learning to read hard with her is that she wants to read herself. I have tried teaching her before, but she loses interest or wants to do things her own way and won’t listen. When she is receptive I’ll sneak in some new words and pronunciation keys for her to practice. My favorite one is from the book “If You Take a Mouse to School”. There are 4 words that the mouse writes on the chalkboard that are above and beyond what the students are writing. It caught my attention so I showed her what they were. She has been “reading” or recognizing these words for many months. They are onomatopeia, verisimilitude, precocious, and I can’t remember the last one but it starts with an M.
So reading is my next step. I picked up a book this past Monday on teaching your children to read in 100 lessons. I’ll have to let you know how it goes.
Firstly, I’m a mom and wife. Professionally, IT consulting is my job and blogging is the outlet for my passions. I write about things that affect the everyday life of a stay-at-home parent or any parent for that matter such as parenting, relationships, discipline, the media, product reviews, giveaways, social media, food, cooking, gardening and anything else that might come my way.
