Monday, November 08, 2010

Word families

Nora has been asking ALL THE TIME “how do you spell….”.  Usually it’s something like, “How do you spell ‘I am going to go to the birthday party and have a really fun time’.”

Seriously.

She can get the beginning sound and the ending sound about 95% of the time but, forget the middle sounds.

I have not been too worried about it (small lie, I have been worried.  I know what she should know when she gets into kindergarten and even though she already knows enough, I want her to know IT ALL.  I know, I know, calm down obsessive mom.), I encourage her to sound out the words and do her best.

In her nature, she gets very frustrated with me for not telling her EXACTLY what she should write and frustrated with herself if it’s not perfect.

(Which, I have to say, I have not encouraged her OCD tendencies.  If anything, I steer towards the opposite, constantly telling her-it’s no big deal, do your best, it’s okay if it’s not 100%.  She will have stomach ulcers and be appalled when she learns that I had so much fun my freshman (and sophomore) year of college that I pulled a “C” average.  Not proud of it but not ashamed.  I have a job and not a single soul has ever asked to see my GPA.)

So, tonight, at dinner she told us she was going to be in a spelling bee.

(I really don’t think she is going to be in a spelling bee.  I think she heard the announcements at chapel this morning and heard them mention spelling bee in reference to the upper grades and she took it to heart.  I was impressed she actually called it a spelling bee instead of spelling flea or something like that.)

And she told us she didn’t know how to spell anything.  Bless her heart.

Matthew and I were all, Oh, yes you can!  You can spell Nora and Elyn and hey, let’s practice some other words.

We went through the torturous process of sounding out words and spelling them.  Finally I said, let’s just write down some words and have her read them.

And she read words from the ‘at’ family.  (Written by Matthew.  I know that is crazy that I put that as a disclaimer, but I am proud of my handwriting and I just want you all to know that I would have done perfect kindergarten lettering had I written it.  Swallowing pride now.)

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  We were so proud of her and she was proud of herself.  One step closer to kindergarten!

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We got a package of clothes from my mom today and in it were these pajamas…

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How cute are the bedtime ballerinas!

1 comment:

Deborah said...

The mom in me can relate to so much of this post...the OCD tendencies, the perfect handwriting, the obsessive mom feelings, etc...

However, the (former) kindergarten teacher in me is thinking, "I wish HALF of my students had known their alphabet on the first day of school, much less their -at words!"

YOU ARE DOING GREAT WITH HER!!!!

LOVE the stainless fridge, by the way.

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