Tuesday, January 21, 2014

connecting the dots.

After finishing some graduate classes on learning theory, I find myself thinking about how to apply that to my own kiddo. Fact: boys can be a bit behind comparison to their girl peers when it comes to learning. Fact: my son is almost three and half. Fact: most of the time my son would rather eat a book than read it. What's a mom to do?

We tossed around the idea of doing a Montessori preschool for Nate but they are a lot more expensive and, while Nate does learn by doing, he needs a bit more structure than most of the programs offer. Instead, he's in a normal preschool/daycare class and we're trying to make the most of it.

I will say that I've had some proud moments lately and they haven't been strictly academic based. After seeing the movie Frozen in the theatre (which is amazing by the way!), I promptly bought the sound track. During the first song, Nate immediately recognized the song and piped out with a "just like in the snowman movie!"  There have been a lot of "just likes" in the last month or so, but I was in for a hilarious "aha" moment yesterday.

For my dad's 59th birthday, we made a spur of the moment idea to have my family over to my house for dinner and ice cream cake. Nate was amazing as we knocked out errands to the drug store, grocery store, Costco, and (our favorite) Starbucks for recharge coffee for me and cake pop for him. Last night when we went to bed, he picked Llama Llama Mad at Mama. Now this little tale talks about a little guy who begrudgingly runs errands with his mom but slowly discovers that if he's a good helper, then he gets a treat. Once we finished the book, Nate said "Hey! Just like today...you did this to me. I am very mad at you! .... Good night" and then fell asleep. At least he understood the story and was able to apply it to his day :)

Up next on the list: getting this kid to learn his letters. At this point it's going to be like learning rehab - he's going to have to want it for the learning to work. He could not care less right now!

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