Monday, May 16, 2011

Don't Blink, They Grow Overnight

It seems like yesterday that I was having contractions and was about to meet this little boy who would steal my heart the moment I held him. In less than two months he will be four years old. Little E will be old enough to attend Pre K in the fall and get to go back to school. Last year when I decided to stay home and work barely part time, I pulled my little boy out of daycare.
Since then he has learned so much staying home with me. Daycare gave him the building blocks, so to speak, in his learning foundation. I don't try to boast but he is a bright little boy. I had considered enrolling him in the summer VPK (Voluntary Pre Kindergarten) but I know that if went now, he would be bored with the fall VPK program.
I used to worry that my little boy was going to have trouble since he waited until after a year old to start talking and saying more than mama and dada.I compared him to his sister who started speaking at 6 months and could communicate with me. But I think he has done quite well.
He surprises me all the time. Little E used to only recognize the letters in capital form, now he knows the lowercase letters. He can count to 15 and recognizes all the numbers from 0 to 9. He knows his shapes, colors and basic commands like up, down, inside and outside. He surprised me last night by spelling his name. I thought it was a fluke, so I asked him to spell it for daddy tonight and he did it! He was SO proud of himself.
I was beaming!!
I have started teaching him how to read using a book that my friend, who was a teacher before having her own children uses, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons , by Siegfried Engelmann. He is so excited about learning this book and keeps wanting to do more than one exercise a day.
I still can't believe that my little boy will be going to school this coming fall. I'm going to enjoy every moment now. I will relish in every moment of prayer time when he asks me to read the prayer book one more time. I will sing him Itsy Bitsy Spider an extra time if he asks. They grow up too fast. I am taking every day, one minute at a time.