Sunday

We seem to just do school work when we have the opportunity. There are days during the week that nothing gets done, but then there are days like today when we find ourselves snuggled on the couch doing workbook pages. Tonight we worked on identifying rhyming words. When we have an activity where you are supposed to color the correct pictures I found that it helps to put an 'X' on the wrong pictures. Alex has started doing that on her own. Just like with the rhyming exercise tonight... she was looking at pictures and had to decided if the word rhymed with 'mail'. She would say the word and then say, "no" and put an 'X' on it. I think she is beginning to understand the rhyming thing, but we still need to work on it. We did a few pages on sequencing, that is still really hard. We did some letter work also. She traced the letter 'S' and 's' on her own and was very proud. When she writes her name she uses all uppercase letters, but when we work on letter we always do uppercase and lowercase. We practice a few more letters with my hand over hers. 'm' and 'r'. I wrote 'Emma' and 'mommy' and we underlined the 'm' where appropriate. She liked that. Also worked on the number '2'. She needed my hand over hers for that also. She tried to do it on her own, but it just wasn't coming out right. We'll keep working. She loves to do mazes. The ones in her workbook are letters, tonight she had to follow the 'H' and 'h' to reach the end of the maze. She would get off track a little bit and then when I would ask her, "Is this an H?" she could tell me yes or no. She's definitely getting better.
I've also noticed that her coloring is getting better. She isn't completely precise, but in comparison to what she has done in the past she is beginning to stay more in the lines. Or at least she tries to, where in the past she would just scribble all over the entire page. Progress.
Emma likes to color these days, too. I notice that she is getting more control also. She can draw straight lines and kind of draw a circle. Her temper and lack of attention keeps us from getting too much formal work done, but I know she is picking up on things just from listening and watching what I do with Alex.
Emma is starting to pay more attention during reading time at night... especially if she hears a word she likes. For instance, if she hears the word 'monkey' she comes running and needs to see the picture. Then it may hold her attention for a little while. Alex still likes to repeat everything I read. I try to point out little things when we read, like the beginning and end of the book, the title page, etc. They both ask lots of questions, and I think that's great unless they are asking something that they already know. Lot's of times I turn the question back around to them.