Cognitive Development
Raina defers continuously to adults in charge. At least twice a day she says, “You’re the teacher. You’re the boss.” This phrase actually started as “You’re not the teacher; you’re not the boss” but she quickly capitulated when I said that I was a teacher. Ms. Katie teaches swimming and Ms. Kelly teaches gymnastics and Mommy teaches numbers and counting. And to occupy Raina’s brain in the car, I decided to start pointing out all the numbers on signs and have Raina read them. We’re in the slowly developing stage. She’ll see 35 and say “three five …. thirty-five” but she gets very stumped by numbers ending in zero (like 60). She delights in hearing three or four-digits numbers read correctly, and is absolutely thrilled with herself if she can list off all the digits before we zoom on past them.
Also, Raina has a very firm grasp of left and right (as she learned to make a capital L with her left hand) and so she will frequently shout out “two five, twenty-five, on the RIGHT!!!” She just beams after every single one.
Raina is an incredibly focused kid and, if her mind is sufficiently occupied, she will work on the task for long periods of time until she gets it right. Fortunately / Unfortunately for Raina, this means she’s smart for her age, which directly leads to boredom a lot of the time. Raina is ridiculously bored going to the YMCA nursery this summer. The nursery is filled with kids aged 6 weeks to just before kindergarten, and toys recommended for that age group. It doesn’t matter. Raina is bored silly, and will often wait at the front window for me to return and pick her up so she can get out of there. In fact, one nursery worker commented to me “Raina is very smart, and she’s bored in the nursery. At least she’ll be moving up to the Hub soon.” The Hub is where the older kids go, five and up. When I corrected the worker, Raina had just turned three and she had TWO MORE YEARS of the nursery, the worker just shook her head and apologized. Poor Raina.
Luckily for her, she only has two more weeks of nursery to go this summer. And she’s going to summer camp in the afternoons, which I hope will keep her happy. But there’s no question for next year. When she turns four, we have to enroll her in school – she’d go crazy in another year of daycare – and she has to go to summer camp instead of the YMCA nursery. I think it’s the only way the two of us will stay sane next summer!
Raina knows her letters and at some point we realized we could be doing phonix work with her. She sounds out the letters, saying “buh, buh, B!”, and then lists off a bunch of B words (blue, berry, Braidon). She’s really good at it, and has become addicted to “Big Bird Gets a Letter,” an online Sesame Street game, in which six objects and a letter are shown. The task is to identify the three objects that begin with the letter’s sound. She’s rather solid on the consonants, but occasionally gets tripped up by vowels. Vowels having two sounds is a little much for her active working memory to process; she struggles to identify the picture, figure out its start sound, identify the letter, and match it to the displayed letter’s start sound, when the letter has two possible sounds. I admit, I mostly hate the letter C for this very reason. I haven’t figured out a logical explanation of why C decided to have two sounds, both of which were already represented by other letters. She’s getting better with the vowels, and when she’s hanging out by herself you can hear her chant “ih, ih, I!” or “eh, eh, E!” as she tries to get it straight.
She still hasn’t mastered pronouncing all the sounds in words, though. She says “th” as “f,” which makes her age “free.” And she just ignores the “L” sound in all words, although she can say “L” just fine. She’ll figure it out eventually :)
Raina’s legs are long enough to reach her Big Wheel pedals easily, and she is quite speedy on her bike. We will bike up to the Ross Playground, which is mostly uphill and requires some additional help from her parents, but on the flat or slightly downhill slopes, Raina is a speed demon. We actually have to jog to keep up with her. The funniest part, though, is watching her park the Big Wheel at the bike rakes. She careens directly at the metal poles, her parents gasp desperately and reach to catch her (always missing), and she stops just perfectly and jumps right out. She does this to me every time and I still panic and then shake my head in relief. I thought biking would really wear her out, but it doesn’t, so when the temperature drops, we might go on family walks/bikes at Creve Coeur Lake. The terrain is very flat, the path is wide enough, and it’s a much longer route. We’re going to build up her muscles one way or another!
Also, Raina has a very firm grasp of left and right (as she learned to make a capital L with her left hand) and so she will frequently shout out “two five, twenty-five, on the RIGHT!!!” She just beams after every single one.
Raina is an incredibly focused kid and, if her mind is sufficiently occupied, she will work on the task for long periods of time until she gets it right. Fortunately / Unfortunately for Raina, this means she’s smart for her age, which directly leads to boredom a lot of the time. Raina is ridiculously bored going to the YMCA nursery this summer. The nursery is filled with kids aged 6 weeks to just before kindergarten, and toys recommended for that age group. It doesn’t matter. Raina is bored silly, and will often wait at the front window for me to return and pick her up so she can get out of there. In fact, one nursery worker commented to me “Raina is very smart, and she’s bored in the nursery. At least she’ll be moving up to the Hub soon.” The Hub is where the older kids go, five and up. When I corrected the worker, Raina had just turned three and she had TWO MORE YEARS of the nursery, the worker just shook her head and apologized. Poor Raina.
Luckily for her, she only has two more weeks of nursery to go this summer. And she’s going to summer camp in the afternoons, which I hope will keep her happy. But there’s no question for next year. When she turns four, we have to enroll her in school – she’d go crazy in another year of daycare – and she has to go to summer camp instead of the YMCA nursery. I think it’s the only way the two of us will stay sane next summer!
Raina knows her letters and at some point we realized we could be doing phonix work with her. She sounds out the letters, saying “buh, buh, B!”, and then lists off a bunch of B words (blue, berry, Braidon). She’s really good at it, and has become addicted to “Big Bird Gets a Letter,” an online Sesame Street game, in which six objects and a letter are shown. The task is to identify the three objects that begin with the letter’s sound. She’s rather solid on the consonants, but occasionally gets tripped up by vowels. Vowels having two sounds is a little much for her active working memory to process; she struggles to identify the picture, figure out its start sound, identify the letter, and match it to the displayed letter’s start sound, when the letter has two possible sounds. I admit, I mostly hate the letter C for this very reason. I haven’t figured out a logical explanation of why C decided to have two sounds, both of which were already represented by other letters. She’s getting better with the vowels, and when she’s hanging out by herself you can hear her chant “ih, ih, I!” or “eh, eh, E!” as she tries to get it straight.
She still hasn’t mastered pronouncing all the sounds in words, though. She says “th” as “f,” which makes her age “free.” And she just ignores the “L” sound in all words, although she can say “L” just fine. She’ll figure it out eventually :)
Raina’s legs are long enough to reach her Big Wheel pedals easily, and she is quite speedy on her bike. We will bike up to the Ross Playground, which is mostly uphill and requires some additional help from her parents, but on the flat or slightly downhill slopes, Raina is a speed demon. We actually have to jog to keep up with her. The funniest part, though, is watching her park the Big Wheel at the bike rakes. She careens directly at the metal poles, her parents gasp desperately and reach to catch her (always missing), and she stops just perfectly and jumps right out. She does this to me every time and I still panic and then shake my head in relief. I thought biking would really wear her out, but it doesn’t, so when the temperature drops, we might go on family walks/bikes at Creve Coeur Lake. The terrain is very flat, the path is wide enough, and it’s a much longer route. We’re going to build up her muscles one way or another!
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