Writing

I think I briefly mentioned the other day that AJ has started writing letters.  It literally started over night.  I was upstairs putting the baby down for a nap and AJ was working on some coloring crafts to send to hubby in his next care package.  I came down and she says, "Mom!  I wrote my name!"  I looked and she did!  On her own, with no help from me!

I like this picture because I think it accurately represents how crazy she normally looks.

Now, I'm not, by any stretch if the imagination, what you would call a "home school" type of mom, but I figure that I can help her practice forming her letters fairly easily, so we've been working on them a bit.

We've been doing a few different things to practice.  We have a Step 2 easel that has a dry erase board on one side and chalk board on the other.  I'm not an idiot, so she doesn't normally have access to the dry erase markers unless I'm sitting right there with her.  This makes her totally willing to stand there and write letters over and over because it's fun and different and a treat!

The first few times we worked on the letters I got out our alphabet flash cards and held them up, one at a time and she said the letter, then wrote it on the board.  After we did this a few times I decided to challenge her a bit and see how she would do.  I didn't show her the flash card, but I said the letter and she had to think about what it looks like and write it from memory.  This proved to be a little more difficult, but there were really only a few letters that she had a hard time with!

Picture that we sent to Daddy

Now, I am sitting here thinking about this and I cannot believe that she is big enough to be at this point!  I feel like she was just born and now she is writing!  I am really very overwhelmed by it.  I can't even really adequately explain how proud it makes me to see my child learning and growing so quickly.  I can't really take full credit for it (or any credit at all, really), but I completely think that sending her to preschool has been the best decision we have ever made for her.

Anyway, my shameless brag post is over now!