Oh, the first tiny sign of an interest....

My sweet girl has really broken my gender stereotypes.  I just assumed, as a girl, reading and writing and coloring would be the natural firsts in her schooling.  But, she has a hard time coloring for long. And, while she knows ALL her uppercase letters and almost all her lowercase letters along with their sounds, actually making words out of those letters has been of little interest.  She can write the shorter nickname we often call her for her name, but has had no interest in practicing writing letters, let alone write them in combinations to make words.  Sounding words out when I'm reading?  Puh...leaze!  Just get on with the story!!  (She LOVES to be read to.)  So, imagine my (hidden) beaming face last night! 
Well, let me back up a bit. We've been working on less of a fight; a tantrum filled misery; a tear-filled (not always by the child) test of patience bedtime routine-and with success, a much-desired reward at the end of 30 days of easier bedtimes (not perfect, but oh, so much better).  Part of this has been Mommy not listening to "just one more story" after the limit of nighttime reading has been met.  I haven't given into that, but even still...tantrums galore with the "no more story," even after calmly explaining to her she heard me say the story count for the night, and telling me she understood before I even started to read.  Now, instead of fighting over it, after stories are read, Mommy lays down and closes her eyes because she's so tired.  But, if Princess isn't tired, yet, she can look at as many books by herself as she'd like.  This has been great!  After 5 or 6, she's ready to lie down and sleep. 
Okay- so last night, when she was looking at a picture book of animals, I heard her say "A..A....A....Alligator....wait. Cuh...Cuh..Cuh...Crocodile."  See - she saw the picture of the large scary reptile, assumed it was an alligator, but when she saw the word under the animal, she saw it started with a c, not an a.  !!!!!!  BREAK-THROUGH???

Maybe to other people, this isn't as exciting as it was to me, but WOOHOO!!!!  I was THRILLED! 
(but, didn't want to spoil the illusion that Mommy is sleeping, so couldn't say anything to her directly.  Plus, didn't want her to feel embarrassed for whatever reason this would make her embarrassed...I'm the last person to try to explain a 4-1/2 year old girl's emotions!!)
No, I don't expect her to just sit down and start whipping through novels.  But, hearing her notice the word wasn't the one she was saying....Ahhh.....what a great feeling!

Today, got back into some schoolwork.  We did some songs, which my star pupil is LOVING!  So cute!  She's never been as into singing as other kids her age, but she's loving these cute little songs we're singing at the start of our schoolwork.  A weather one, a calendar one, and today, a couple about the color red. 
Then, a little "A" craft, thanks to Preschool Palace:

After coloring one little picture in a mini book on Red (it has all of 3 pictures, but, like I said above, coloring is not high on my girl's favorite things to do), I handed her a little minibook of Numbers.  Part of each page, there is a section to trace the number of that page.  since she does NOT like tracing letters, I thought this book would be a few days' progress.  but, apparently, tracing numbers is totally different from tracing letters, and she did all 10 pages!  WOW!!

Oh, and I should add, thank you to tlsbooks.com for this numbers book.  It was a wonderful activity for our school day.

After the numbers book, a little cutting practice and some letter matching (lowercase) on a worksheet, we finished up with 3 library books, Princess's choice (I love that she picked and loves 2 classics):

After schoolwork, a quick lunch, and my girl has disappeared into her playroom.  I am sitting here, lusting after some more watermelon.  The previous 2 trips to Costco, they didn't have whole watermelon, so I was able to leave my addiction to that melon behind....or so I thought.  Yesterday - they were BACK!  So, without a second thought, I got one.  This plate of melon you see in the picture:  My second helping after eating a chicken sandwich.  Dare I mention that I had a 3rd helping after I took the picture and inhaled the 2nd?  I already admitted to wanting more....mmmmm......watermelon......

Okay...my waterlogged self is going to get busy with laundry, or cleaning floors, or some kind of activity....then maybe reward my hard work (cough, cough...okay, not so hard) with more watermelon....

'Til Later!