My work

This summer I watched my aunt’s children for a few days each week, while she worked. There are three of them, two boys, Joseph and Andrew and their sister Beatrice, Kailyn’s favorite cousin. Since Beatrice was going to start kindergarten that year, my aunt asked that I work with her on her letters and sounds. Little did I know what I was getting into! That first week, we started slow with just some simple flashcards of capital letters. Beatrice wasn’t too excited, but for some reason Kailyn was. I totally did not expect Kailyn to pay attention, much less participate. However, after only a few minutes I had the two of them facing off to try and guess all the letters. I was amazed…when did Kailyn become so intrigued by learning? Throughout the previous school year, I had been working with the girls just a bit on letter recognition, but nothing to serious. We usually just played a bit of game to try and find the capital letters. Anyway, I went home that night and decided that if Kailyn was willing to learn, then I was ready to take full advantage of that! The next few days I went to the store and bought little apples and busses to make upper and lower case flashcards as well as numbers. I also found several workbooks for pre-k children. After making the flashcards, I laminated them so that they could withstand bending and anything else that might try and destroy them. I also bought some stickers, for a bit of motivation if Kailyn ever got tired of learning. So that next week, I pulled out the flashcards and the girls went crazy! I have never seen two little girls so excited to start learning! At the beginning, Kailyn knew almost all of her uppercase letters, but really struggled with the lowercase letters, simply because she didn’t see them much. To my complete amazement, within less than a month she knew all her uppercase letters and almost all the lowercase. She could pair the uppercase and lowercase together and had begun the workbooks and was doing fabulous! Well, needless to say summer ended and Beatrice went off to school. One morning shortly after the school year had started, Kailyn came up and asked me if she could do her work. I looked at her a bit baffled and asked her if she meant her letters. Sure enough, she did and since then, at least three times a week (the days that she doesn’t go to her mother’s day out program) we have “school.” We go through both the letter and number flashcards and then do a page or two in her workbook and then if she still wants to do more, we practice her name and writing numbers. One of our latest and funniest endeavors is to get shaving cream and smear it all over the kitchen table and write letters in it, she absolutely loves this! Now, I know that this sounds like kind of a lot of work for a four year old to do almost everyday, but it is something Kailyn takes very seriously! One morning, I had a lot to do and we were running around a bit. Suddenly, Kailyn stopped me and said very earnestly, “Mom, I have to do my work. I haven’t done it today!!” I was so taken aback. Here our darling girl was asking to learn her letters and how to write them and do things I certainly looked at as work, but not fun work. It was clear, to Kailyn this was fun. She loved being able to show Tony what she did or point out letters and know what words started with what letters and what sound each letter makes. She was and still is thirsty for knowledge! So I have decided, as long as she is willing to learn I am willing to teach her! Maybe by the time she starts kindergarten next year, we can have her reading War and Peace…ha-ha!