Learning Together

I am so grateful for good friends and good examples that I can look to for ideas, motivation, and inspiration. I feel like it takes all of my energy to keep up with the boys and their school work that I seem to spend less time working with Emma on the skills she needs to be prepared for Kindergarten. Thanks to the Leap Frog videos she has already mastered all of her uppercase letters and sounds. After reading a friend's blog and getting motivated to spend more time teaching Emma, I came up with a game that Emma and I could play together that would help her find an object, name it, and tell me what letter it starts with. At first we gathered all the little people animals together and I put down various letters that each animals name started with. Then I had Emma tell me the name of the animal and figure out which letter it went with. That was fun but she figured that out all too quickly. So, next I took some random little people objects and lined up a bunch of letters. She had so much fun with that and by the end we were both laughing because after matching everything she picked up the letter U and said, "Underwear starts with U." It was hilarous. Since then we have mastered all the lowercase letters and moved on to simple three letter words. She can now sound out and read: cat, dog, mom, dad, ball, cup, jet, pig, fox, hen, and sun. It still takes her a bit to figure out each word but that is progress to be proud of.