This morning Ellie was a little reluctant to get out of bed. When I asked her if she was going to be Ms. Crankypants again, she gave me a sly smile, said no, and slowly started to get out of bed. However, when I mentioned that it was raining outside, she jumped out of bed and ran to her dresser and said the following:
"If its raining Mommy then it'll be a little chilly. i'll have to wear pants and a long sleeve shirt so I don't get too cold. And I need my rain boots and rain jacket. Can I take my umbrella mommy? That way I don't have to worry about my clothes getting wet. We should bring my other shoes to school too because I can't wear my rain boots all day, that would be silly!"
So she got dressed rapidly and was excited to run out the door and jump in every puddle she could find.
Ellie ate her breakfast with her friend at school.
However practical Ellie was this morning, I was very impressed with the work that I found in her cubby. Ellie wrote out all the dates on a calendar for November. I know it took her a long, quite a bit of patience, hard work, and a little erasing. But she wrote her numbers 1-30 on a calendar.
The most impressive thing? Ellie wrote 4 different words. When I asked Ellie what she wrote she said, "This first word is the "m" word. M goes mmmm". She wrote mom. I asked the teacher. She said Ellie is using the Montessori moveable alphabet where they combine sounds to "build" words. She said Ellie is working towards reading as she will begin to recognize letters and the sounds that they make and the words that then get built. So the "big kid work" that Ellie did yesterday was to build 4 words (mom, sam, cat, wet) and then write them.
Ellie was very excited to show me this work and asked if I would put it on the refrigerator. I said I would.
Side note: A few weeks ago Ellie saw that i had put some of her "work" in the recycling bin. She was a little upset and asked me. I told her that this specific work wasn't completely right that it looked like she maybe hadn't focused as well as other work. This specific item was a worksheet where she had practiced writing the numbers 1-10. She had done several of the numbers backwards, so I pointed this out. I told her that when she had "good" work that she had focused on and tried really hard and the numbers weren't backwards, we could put it on the fridge. So yes, the calendar and words will go on the fridge.
