Reading Readiness Emerges

Adeline is always the one that ends up knocking my socks off in the academic department.  It isn't that my other girls aren't bright or that Adeline can out perform them.  While my other two girls fall right where I expect them to be, Adeline continues to rise above the expectations I have set for her.

A couple nights ago we were looking at pictures of helicopters in different colors.  Each helicopter had the color word written underneath it.  As we moved across the page, I asked Adeline what letter each color word started with and she answered correctly.  When I turned the page we found a color by number activity that had each color word written in black.  I don't know why I did this but I asked Adeline to read the words to me and. . . she did!  I was pretty impressed.  I repeated it and found the same outcome.  Savannah was so impressed that she quickly made some color word flash cards for Adeline which included the color words we had just covered and couple more.  She threw in pink to try to trick her because the set included purple as well.  I went over them twice with Adeline and she got most of them the first time and then all of them second.  I was astounded.  It was obvious that she was looking at the words, their letters and then thinking of those letter sounds when reading the words like green and gray or blue and brown.

Here is a clip of her third time through the cards.  The last card is brown and Adeline begins to sound it out with a bl blend but then corrects herself with a br blend and proceeds to say "brown."  Savannah misunderstands and thinks she says blue.  Please excuse Lila's piano playing in the background.

By the way, she got them all right the next morning.  It is reproducible which makes Alex and I scratch our head in wonder.

Lila is Swimming with Big Arms!

We started swim lessons in order to kill two birds with one stone. Since Lila was showing opposition when moving to the deeper end of pools even when being held and was not receiving any physical therapy, I figured a private swim lesson with Miss Trish was the perfect fit.

Miss Lila resisted these lessons. They are intense as the child is moving the majority of the 30 minute lesson. Lila was forced to hang onto the floating bar and kick the length of pool, go under water and float on her back. None of which she liked. Eventually, something clicked. I finally felt that we were not just covering the PT piece but also learning to swim.

Lila's last and final session of lessons was a soaring success. Miss Lila put her brave face on and learned to swim with her big arms. She puts her face in the water and appears to be a bit of a power house when watching her stroke. Maybe she will follow in her daddy's footsteps?

Alex and I attended Lila's last lesson in order to show her how proud we are of her success. She kicked it in high gear for us and started taking breaths while continuing on with her stroke. It wasn't pretty and still needs probably a year's worth of work to perfect, but it was progress and bravery. We are very proud!

Here is a clip of Lila Grace swimming back and forth to her teacher Miss Trish before taking breaths clicked. She is definitely tired in this one as her arms aren't moving as quickly or as high but it took a minute to get my camera.