Sunday, December 20, 2009

The Growth In Selena

It has been so fun to watch the maturity in Selena these last couple of weeks, that we have not been doing any school. She is becoming more and more confident in her skills all the time.

I’ve been pushing the edge a little with her, which has been so fun to see how she reacts to these new experiences. I have been making up simple sentences using three letter words, which she finds randomly on her Doodle Pad, Dry Erase Board, or a slip of paper. She is so proud when she finds them, and comes running. I will ask her what it says, and she just proudly reads the words.

Tonight I wrote on one Doodle Pad, The cat had a hat. Then on her other Doodle Pad I wrote The cat sat on a hat. On a slip of paper I wrote The man and cat had a bed. Selena was so excited, and proudly read these three sentences without skipping a single word.

Now if I would have done something like this just a few weeks ago, Selena would have shied away from even attempting to read them all. She might have read the first one, and that would probably have been it. I see our school starting to take a whole new direction for us, and even a different plan for our phonics, since she has just no desire to work from the Progressive phonics anymore. I see where I am going to just use these simple little sentences that I make up and the ones that she makes up to finish introducing her phonics to her.

She has become so confident in so many areas. Natalie at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns, sent Selena the nicest Christmas package with our Postcard exchange. Selena loves everything she got and is using all of it with such confidence and giggles every day.

415yOVlVEJL__SL500_AA280_ This Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks were by far Selena’s favorite gift from Natalie. She just loves to count the number of green triangles, or whatever shape she is working with, to build the puzzle. She does very well at working this on her own, and is so proud of the pictures she makes.

31KArwbsLdL__SL500_AA239_Selena won’t let me take this away from her. She loves to go through the pages, and work through it page by page. There are some concepts that Selena doesn’t understand, but I love to have the material to tone in on these skills with her.

I think the funniest thing that Selena has done this week though, has to be the fact that she can wrap her little mind around Santa Clause, but she won’t buy the Reindeer part. We rented Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer movie.

51mQgJkDTML__SL500_AA240_  Selena acted like she was going to watch this with us, but as soon as the Reindeer were shown, she waved her arm and said, No Way. But when Santa came on, she was glued to the TV. Well since the movie is about Rudolph, I guess you know it didn’t last long before Selena was ready to just shut it off.

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4 comments:

  1. What a wonderful gift she gave you! A cool activity you might try later with Selena is having her read the sentence and then cut it up and put the sentence back in the right order. She might like trying to do that.

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  2. I am happy that Selena loves our gifts and puts them to good use. It's also interesting how the road to literacy varies with each child and probably even with children in the same family. As for the movie - Anna was quite happy to watch it all. Interestingly, when I asked her later to make the story with the word Rudolph she cheerfully gave me the famous song literally word-by-word. I had no idea that she remembered it so well :)

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  3. What a privilege you have to shape your sweet little granddaughter and share in these milestones! She is very fortunate to have you. Have a wonderful Christmas... thanks for entering my Christmas giveaway. Good Luck!

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  4. Debbie, her reading skills blow me away! It is amazing.

    She is just too smart to fall for the reindeer:-).

    We like the pattern blocks here too. Hanna and Joe both pull them out frequently.

    You are amazing for helping her learn so many things so young!!

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