A day in the life of Madelyn

Today I learned many things! We first did some science experiments with dry oatmeal. I learned about measurements and sifting and volumn and also gravity by throwing it everywhere. It was also a good lesson in sharing and in how much patience Mommy has.


Then we did some building with our Lincoln Logs and learned about horses and cowboys. Apparently when you leave the gate open, Mommy makes all the horses gallop away and the cowboy then ropes them and brings them back home.



I've also been helping Mommy cook dinner everynight! We've made spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, fajitas and french onion soup! Here I am practicing my cutting with Mommy's help. I'm very good at following directions and listening, otherwise Mommy says I can't do it anymore.


I've also been writing letters and reading lots of books. Yesterday we went to the library and brought home 35 books to read! We've been reading everyday for almost an hour! I LOVE reading!

Dear Santa

In case you can't read 4 year old speak, LOL, it says "Dear Santa, I want to have lots of presents! Love Madelyn"

I was very impressed by how much she wrote herself! I helped her spell presents, reminded her of the silent 'e' on 'have' and helped her change 'lost' to 'lots'. She even added the exclamation point herself! She argued with me about the spelling of "santa" because the 'u' makes the sound "ah" like in "umbrella" so "Sant-uh" has a 'u' at the end! DUH mom! LOL

Next I think we'll have to learn about how to put words in order...

Madelyn is READING!!!!!!

Madelyn has really surprised me with how much she is learning! She has known the alphabet for a long time and seemed interested in learning words because she was always asking me what signs and stuff said and how to spell things. So I figured the next step was for her to learn letter sounds and we picked up a LeapFrog Letter Factory movie that helped her to learn (and for me to relearn LOL)

About three days ago, I was doing Sudoku in the Sunday paper and she was looking at the comic strips. She usually walks around the house repeating letter sounds that are pretty random, so I didn't think anything of it when I heard her practicing her sounds. She ran up to me and said "Mommy! That word says "Yah-OOO-uh...YOU! And this word says "nnn-oooo, NO!" From there we picked up her books and started sounding out words. In just three days, she recognizes all the common words (the, an, is, has, etc), loves the punctuation marks (especially the exclamation point!!!), is learning about silent e's and what makes a vowel have a long sound or a short sound and is learning about combo sounds like "sh", "ch" and "th" along with sounding out lots of words! She is so excited about reading and I'm really trying very hard not to push it at all and let her lead the way. I'm still in shock that she is retaining so much and figuring it all out!