After a long, fun-filled year of crafts, songs, books, poems, verses, activities, Bible stories, games, and learning through all of the letters, we finally made our way to the end of the alphabet. As I reflect back over this past school year, I am so proud of my little Brooklyn. While we had tons of fun, and Brooklyn learned so much, it wasn’t always easy to stay on course. We had good weeks where we got all of our planned activities done and learned a lot, and we had weeks where we hardly accomplished anything. Through all of this, I’ve really learned to let my girls be kids who have fun during this time of their lives when play should be the way they spend the majority of their time. (There is a lot you can teach a child through playing!) Although I put a lot of time and effort into planning these lessons each week, I’ve had to get over the fact that every week isn't going to go like I planned. There were many beautiful days, especially in the Spring, that we rushed through our school time so we could go play outside. There were other days when I could tell Brooklyn just needed some extra attention, so we skipped school time altogether and just snuggled up on the couch to read books. I value the moments that I get to spend with each of my girls and try to do the best I can to teach them while also playing and doing fun things. I’ve always been careful not to push learning on my girls. While Brooklyn really enjoys school time and doing crafts, there are occasional days when she really doesn’t want to participate. I’ve learned that trying to force her to do these activities is pointless. Finding the right balance between structured school time and free play time has been one of my biggest challenges. My advice to someone who is just starting to teach their toddler is to start off slowly. It was difficult to get in all five days of school every single week (even though a lot of the activities only lasted 10-15 minutes). I think my expectations were too high going into this school year. It was extremely difficult for me to squeeze a structured school time in if we wanted to get out of the house or have friends over to play. Once I let myself off the hook and realized it was ok if I didn’t accomplish every single planned activity within the allotted week, Brooklyn and I both enjoyed this learning time much better. There were several letters that I spread out over a two week period rather than trying to squeeze everything into one week - these were our favorite letters! In conclusion, Brooklyn and I really enjoyed learning this past year. We also enjoyed spending time cooking together, reading books, going on walks, trying out different parks, going to MOPS, having playdates with friends, exploring, playing with playdough, playing dolls, going to storytime, and just doing kid things. Now we are going to enjoy a fun, laid back summer! I’m still deciding what/how I will teach her next school year and looking forward to all of the possibilities.
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| August 2013 - Brooklyn was still a little toddler! |
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| June 2014 - She's grown up so much! |
To help myself remember, here are some things Brooklyn learned this year. When we started school time in August, Brooklyn (who was 28 months) could recognize pretty much every letter (but she only knew some lowercase letters). She knew a lot of her shapes and all of the colors. She could count to 10 and was able to sing several songs for memory. She was learning how to hold a pencil and scribbled whenever she colored or drew anything. She was able to spell her name.
Here are some of the things that Brooklyn could do at the end of our school year (at just over 3 years old):
- She can recognize all of the letters in the alphabet - uppercase and lowercase.
- She knows all of the letter sounds (there are a couple that she mixes up occasionally).
- She can write a lot of the letters by herself.
- She can sometimes even write words on her on (she loves writing O’s and M’s so she likes to write “moo” and “mom”).
- She can count to twenty (sometimes she’ll get stuck in the teens and repeat them a few times though. She also still says “twenty-teen” occasionally which is so cute it’s hard to correct sometimes).
- She can recognize numbers 1-9.
- She can easily count things. Example - she is really good at counting how many yellow butterflies are on a page of lots of various colored butterflies. She can also count how many grapes are in her bowl, how many people are sitting at the table, or how many people are missing from the table.
- She can hold up the number of fingers that you tell her or count out the correct number of an object. Example - she can correctly give me 13 goldfish out of a box of goldfish.
- She can understand simple addition and subtraction.
- She knows all of her shapes and can recognize the shape of most objects.
- She can tell me the opposite of pretty much anything.
- She knows TONS of songs for memory. (Including almost every Mary Poppins song).
- She still remembers several of the Bible verses that we learned.
- She holds her pencil the right way and has started drawing real pictures - she’s been really into drawing people lately.
- She has started trying to stay in the lines when she colors (sometimes).
- She has learned to use a glue stick by herself.
- She is an expert at lacing string through holes.
- She is an excellent painter.
- She can use scissors by herself.
- She remembers stories very well and can read them back to me after I’ve read them to her. (She did this almost every Friday after I read her Bible story).
- She loves to help and is very good at following directions.
- She is very creative and given some scrap paper, scissors, and glue she can work for hours on creating a masterpiece.
- She has an amazing imagination and loves to teach her little sister and her dolls all of the new things that she learns.
Over the summer, I plan to relax and have lots of fun with my sweet girls. I also want to have a little structured time occasionally to keep them in the habit. While we were going through the alphabet, I would write our verse of the week on a card for us to review each day. I plan to let Brooklyn pick one of these cards every morning during breakfast so we can review it together. Hopefully, this will keep the Scriptures on her mind. I may also do our circle time some mornings when we have nothing planned to do. I have also created a summer bucket list of some fun activities. I will try to post that list next week. I hope everyone has a fun summer with their little ones!!
