warning: mommy blog

ok ok…we haven’t enrolled our funny 3 year old to preschool because honestly, we’re still up in the air about sending her to preschool, wondering if she really needs it, thinking we could wait for kindergarten.

But that doesn’t stop this mom from researching what other kids her age or around her age could do scholastically.  Even since she turned two, Perze and I wanted her to start her reading exercises at three to see if she can handle it.

Here’s an excerpt I read from weekly articles sent to me:

Name Writing
Don’t panic if you notice some kids at preschool writing their names while your child doesn’t even recognize the letter his name starts with. When kids learn to write is highly variable, and this year the spread will widen. Your child’s progress depends on gender (girls gain the needed fine motor control sooner), the length of his name and what else is going on developmentally.

So far, Emma can recognize, read, and write her name, as well as write most of the uppercase letters of the alphabet.  She gets a little frustrated so I try not to repeat the writing exercises every day. 

I recently learned that kids 4-6 start learning their lowercase letters, although I thought it would be earlier, so I started teaching her earlier.  Granted, she hasn’t mastered all her lowercase letters, but ever since we started teaching her phonetics and reading, she’s starting to pick it up faster.  She can read words like “Emma, OK, cat, dog, yes, no, my, see…”  I’m really proud of her.  I know she doesn’t like doing her exercises, but little by little, I’m thinking she can read by the time she’s four.  Ambitious?  Maybe, but we’ll see.

Recommended tip for parents:

If you have an iPhone, and your preschooler is ready for reading, you can download “Sight Words Free” to take with you and use during your down time with your child.  On the left is a screen shot that I took of my own iPhone with some applications I use for Em.

So when I don’t carry around Em’s Sight Words Flash Cards, this basically comes in handy.  There’s a lot of educational apps out there for toddlers, so make sure to check it out.  I’ll probably blog about that next time…if you’re good.