The Three R's

Reading , wRiting and Recitation - isn't that how we learnt it? Started writing this post and remembered the catch-phrase :).

Recitation was out of the way before the weekend - D had a prelim competition in school (my last post) and she was selected for the finals. So I'm not getting out of making those props :).

On to Reading - The most recent update about S is that he's so much into "reading a book" thanks to seeing older sis do a lot of it (that example thing working for good habits sometimes :)!). So I decided it's time I started the bedtime story ritual - feeling guilty that I probably started earlier with D, but better late than never ! What is it with kids and wanting to read the same book/see the same movie over and over and over again :) !!! I know "The Crunching Munching Caterpillar" by heart now :). So it goes - I read the book, D reads the book for S once more if she's still awake, and S reads the book "on his own" once again before we actually get to the sleeping bit.

And the Writing - We had a relaxed long weekend with one big highlight being that S got Homework for the first time !! This usually happens at 3.5 years so I was expecting it sometime soon, but my memories of D when first starting her homework - it took weeks of tug-of-war before we got around to a schedule where she willingly wanted to sit and do it - were a bit daunting. To see her now, no-one would realize - she is so good with doing it herself only asking me for help for tough stuff or with some crafty work that she can't handle herself.

So obviously I was sighing a bit thinking of having that experience all over again. And hoping hard that the example set by D would be of some use to nudge S in the right direction, but you can never predict those things as all parents know!

V Aunty is S's teacher at school whom he's very fond of, so every day I hear something that V Aunty told him, or something V Aunty did and so on. So when we opened the notebook to start, the first thing S said was:

"V Aunty said to Enjoy the dots!"

Me at first wondering if this is some new principle of Montessori to love/enjoy your work so get the kids to relate to it better, then it strikes me - his homework was to "Join" the dots !! Well we certainly enjoyed them after that :).