Preschool is in session

Being in tight quarters and having no easy access to outside as is typical of apartment living, I've decided to take the opportunity to reopen "Mommy's Preschool". Here are the result of 1 hour's worth of work today. I may have grown some gray hairs...but at least they learned something. :)

Curious George did several worksheets but this is something I am pretty proud of. I told him what the direction said, but the girls were too busy tearing up the apartment so I needed to turn my attention to them before I could help Curious George write the numbers. By the time I was able to help him, he has written the numbers himself. :) The only thing that is off is that he wrote the number 6 backwards.

This is Thing 2's work. I explained to her the word "short" and then she just took off. Pretty amazing. The circles are all her own.

Thing 1 was too tired to pay attention to me babble on about "short" but she did get well on the shapes. She was able to identify triangle, square and circle on her own.

It makes me feel guilty sometimes how little time I have spent on the girls helping them with things like this, when in comparison Curious George has done many things like this at this age. But it seems the girls know more than I think they do, because they are picking things up much faster than I expect.

I also started focusing on potty training again yesterday. Armed with pull-ups, a sticker chart I printed for free from the internet and a sticker book from Wal-mart, we plow on. I have several set times for them to sit on the potty and they have done well. In fact, this morning during breakfast, Thing 2 said, "poo" so I sat her down. A few minutes later, there was a nice stinky suprise. Yay! Though later in the day, I think she was feeling the pressure to poo on the potty again. She doesn't understand yet that she can just pee and get the same cheer from everyone.

The problem with the English language

Curious George is playing a computer game to help him with Math skills. He can count to 10 without a problem, but up 20 it's a little shaky, especially 13 and 14. Mainly, that he pronounces them the same way. He has had this problem for a while and I remember mentioning it to Daddy, but he didn't think there's a problem. Now there is. Ha!

The 'th' sound on thirteen, and the 'f' sound on fourteen sounds too similar. The mouth shape is even the same. The only difference is the tongue placement. But how do you teach the subtlety to a 4yr old? My initial solution was teach him that the number 13 starts with a T and that he should pronounce it as such - "Tirteen". At this point my husband would look at me and tell me to ease off as he really is pronouncing it right by saying "thaaa".

Now it's really a problem. Because he pronounces them the same way, he also has a problem differentiating by recognition. Understandably, if he were given a verbal instruction to pick the number 13, he may pick either 13 or 14 if both are one of the choices.

My solution - to teach him the Filipino way of pronouncing "th", which basically means ignore the "h" and say it as a hard "t". Thirteen is now henceforth called "Tirteen". :)

Now he knows the difference by sound. It shall take practice, but problem solved. ;)

Me and my sometimes funny pronounciations can come in handy.

To Daddy, I say "TIEF" and not "THIEF"! We miss you!


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