A Learning Opportunity

After just having a discussion with Julie about boring posts...I am going to post just that. My mom reminded me that these are things I need to blog about...the things I want to remember about Carter. It is true because I have already forgotten so much that I wanted to keep forever. My mom will bring up a memory or an incident that happened and I will be so happy that she brought that memory back, but sad that I really had forgotten it in the first place. Boring to many, yes...but a treasure to me.

So anyway...today I was journaling about Carter's preschool lesson we had just done. I have decided to make a "Carter Learning Folder" to keep all of his worksheets, activities, etc...which I have already done on some scale. However, I am going to make this more of a scrapbook and may eventually turn it into a photobook. So, yes...I did take a picture of him coloring his worksheet...so that in the future he will be able to look at the worksheet he once colored and then see the picture of him doing it...I think it will be a neat thing to have. I also write after each lesson what we did, how he did, and the improvements he has made. I write these in Word but today I am going to copy and paste here so that my mom and whoever else is interested can read what he did today. Today was a very simple day. I also know that many of you will not read this...and may have not even gotten this far:) And that is okay.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Today Carter and I sat down for a “formal” learning session.

We started by him practicing saying his name and how old he is, where he lives, and what his parent’s names are. He has this down. It is cute though because he pronounces my name “Warwa”..right now the L with the “aur” is kind of tough to roll of his tongue. But I like it because I know it will onely last a short time and I am hanging on to those things that are keeping him “little”.

Next we sang through the “ABCs” and counted to 10 this time. He has this down pat as well but we will do this every time because the repetition is good.

Next I gave him a worksheet to help him master his fine motor skills which have come a long way in the last year. This last year has been a huge growth and development year and just floors me with how much he can do…without any help from me. On the worksheet he traced 5 different lines…some pointy, boxy, and others curvy. He did very well. Of course there are spots where he gets off course but he always finds his way back. I know soon he will be able to stick right to the dotted lines the entire time. After completion he got to pick out a sticker to put on his worksheet…he picked a pumpkin.

Next we read the book “So Few of Me” by Peter H. Reynolds. It is a really cute book about a boy named Leo that has so much to do that he dreams about having more of “hims” around to help him. However, once I closed the book Carter said, “That was a really good book but really boring.

After the book I took out our “Blue’s Clues” preschool book. It is a really cute workbook, very colorful. Rightly so, because it is meant to help kids work on colors in many different ways. We went over the basics. Though I already knew that he knew his colors I thought I would take the perspective of a teacher who is testing Carter for the first time to see what he knows. He is too advanced for some of the activities but we went over them anyway as a refresher. I gave him a worksheet with 9 small pictures on it that asked him to color them how they are supposed to be (vs. what might be in his imagination). He colored the banana yellow, the apple red with a green leaf on top, the carrot orange with green leaves, the yellow sun, and so on.

His coloring has evolved from making small short scribbles on pictures (barely covering them) to now drenching the picture in color. He makes sure the entire thing is colored and this means going way outside of the lines to do so. I love the way his page turned out. He is getting it. I know eventually he will learn to color inside the lines but right now that is not important. He is grasping the skills he needs to. His little hands are not trained enough yet to color only inside the lines. This may be his age, or the fact that we have never colored much at all because he usually looses interest after a few swipes across a page. But he is getting better and more thorough, and that is what I count as success. After completion of this page he picked another sticker…this time a mouse.

We went through a couple more color exercises where he had to circle items of a certain color which was really easy. We finally got to a page that made him think a little harder. It was identifying color patterns. If in a line there is a red bird, blue bird, red bird, blue bird, then what color comes next? It took him a few practice rounds to catch on, but catch on he did. I was very proud. We will go back and revisit patterns often until they come as easy as identifying a certain color.

Next we pulled out his dinosaur workbook. On one page there was a big crowd of dinosaurs. He then had to identify and point at all of a certain type of dinosaur, like a triceratops, etc. He is great at finding and matching and loves to play games that involve that.

To finish up he then traced the head of a Tyrannosaurus to practice those fine motor skills again.