One Proud Mama

I wanted to write this down today. A little bragging... But mainly, I write these things in my blog so I remember them years down the road. Addison is growing up so fast - as I know the next one will as well - and I don't want to forget milestones, etc. in her little life. I guess maybe that I why I keep a blog - so when she is 30 I can remember her when she was little.

On Monday, I decided to start working with Addie on her letters and their sounds. It is something that I have been meaning to do, but I was really waiting for her to get the alphabet down before we started. We started singing the alphabet with her a while ago and for the longest time she got the beginning and the end but missed a bunch in the middle. It has just been over the last few weeks she has really figured it out and can now sing the whole thing.

Today is now Friday, and I can proudly say that my little girl can not only sing the alphabet to the end, but she can also recognize MOST of the letters - large and small case - as well as most of their sounds. She doesn't have it down completely yet, but considering we only work on this for about a half hour - sometimes less - a day AND we only started 5 days ago, I am really impressed. She can also read the words dog, mom, and red.

There are two reasons I began this "project." The first reason is that she LOVES books and I noticed about a month ago when she would sit down with a book, she would make up her own words to the pictures. In talking with other moms, especially those with older kids who could read, I found that most felt that their kids did the same thing and were reading not long after. I just felt like she was ready to start the process of learning to read.

The second reason we began working with her like this is that we don't want her to be behind. Since she is our first, we weren't sure what would be expected from her when she starts pre-school next week. Our thinking was that either she would be equal to the progress of her classmates OR she would be ahead. Last night while Charlie was working with her, it occured to me to call my cousin Anne who owns a preschool at home. I told her where we were with Addison and what she has accomplished in the last few days. Anne reassured me that we are "way ahead" of the game with her.

I think the idea of getting her ahead is a good plan as we are a military family. I can't tell you how many older friends I have made along this journey who have had to move kids only to get them into a new school to find that they are "behind" where the new school thinks they should be. I know we will come across this at some point in our Air Force career, but I think it is a good practice to stay on top of her learning from an early age.

This may seem crazy to some, and let me reassure you all that I am not some crazy mom about this. She HONESTLY loves this... Now when we play she brings me her flash cards and wants to play the "alphabet" game. How can I ever say no to that? And we only work for about 15 minutes to a half hour - she often looses interest after that and I am not going to push the issue.

But, I do have to say, I am ONE PROUD MAMA!!!! She has done so much better than I could ever imagine she would.