Preschool Wonders

I love this time of Nicole's life when she is soaking up any and everything in the world around her. As previously mentioned on this blog, it amazes me how well she can handle herself on a computer. She and I have been working with some alphabet flash cards so she can start learning her letters and begin to understand how the little bit of "decoding" she has been doing of the words all around her works. She loves these particular cards because they are write and wipe, so she can practise writing the letters and she loves having a pen in her hand. Today she and I got very excited because she did her first official math problem and began to understand the idea behind the numbers. We have some magnetic refrigerator toys that are in the shape of numbers and mathematical symbols that we have had on our refrigerator almost since the time we moved into this house a year and several months ago. She loves to play with them and knows what all of the numbers are, but today is the first day that she began to get an inkling of their significance. I grabbed two of her colored plastic forks out of the drawer and asked her to do a math problem that my mom and I have both shown her before. I put first one and then the other fork in front of her and asked her how many forks you had if you put one and one together. She answered two. Then I drew out this mathematical problem using the fridge magnets and showed her how the numbers and symbols went together to make the problem work. After several times of showing it to her with the forks and with the numbers she got all excited and started telling me, "1+1=2! 1+1=2!" She was quite excited and so was I. I have never felt more excited about this venture we are setting out on called "home schooling." I now know a modicum of the thrills and chills my mother must have felt over the twelve years she taught me. Thanks, Mom!