April 2013 Updates: Alma’s News, Part 1 Alma with her new ThinkGeek T-shirt...

Alma finished her colours booklet (left). All term she was learning about colours, in two languages: at home (below, watching “Parpar Nechmad” about mixing colours in a song), day care and playgroup. Next term Gymbaroo is all about colours too... The result was good, as now she can name almost all the colours in both languages.

Alma made a fabric collage

A new addition to our felt board collection: Humpty Dumpty facial expressions

Alma can now draw faces with all the parts in the right place! She is becoming frustrated that she can’t read yet (which is normal... She isn’t three yet!) but she has a great interest in letters (top). She also became interested in going down the stairs alone... And told me she could do it after she went down!

Alma is working hard on gaining computer and mouse skills. She can navigate the LeapPad and use the stylus really well (bottom right).

Alma has been very keen on writing, filling strips with lines and dots (top right). She also “wrote” letters to her grandparents Simon (top) and Noam from Haifa (left). Hahgoot drew a picture for grandpa Ido, of him and her with a Passion Fruit flower, which resembles a clock.

Alma also worked hard on letters for her friend Shira.

I gave Alma paper strips and various notebooks to scribble.

I found her a Dora the Explorer workbook and she got obsessed with it! She can see Hahgoot do workbooks so she is very enthusiastic about doing them on her own. Not easy to find stuff she can really do independently... Alma is especially good at matching shapes and their shadows (good start for reading) and has a good eye for detail and spatial awareness (can put the items in the picture to fit the organization in the top picture, as can be seen above) which is a good start for writing.

Following the roaring success of the Dora workbook I found her a Hello Kitty workbook

Who said I will stop making learning resources after the first child? Well, my girls have very different learning styles. Alma needs to move her body and use her senses, so I made her touch-and-feel numbers cards. Her day care teacher was very excited about them, so I made sets of cards for the rest of the kids and they collected, sorted and stuck on materials to fit the numbers as an activity at day care. Hahgoot was happy to help me make the cards. She is always happy to watch me create resources at home. That’s how I learned to be a teacher, watched my mother teach and prepare her lessons...

In our next presentation: Day care adventures and fun with friends