Words everywhere!

JoElle is doing very well learning to read. Two days ago, she saw the word "run" and read it to me. I was a little bit suprised b/c it was not a word we had been working on.

JoElle is reading at least 20 words, probably more that I am not aware of.

She is great with recognizing the letters of the alphabet and their sounds and can write most of the letters. I throw in Spanish once a week or once every two weeks. She catches on to it extremely fast! One morning she woke up and said "Como te llamas?" Tim asked her if she was speaking Spanish, he wasn't sure :) She enunciates extremely well, you would think she is a native Spanish speaker. She learns really fast, so we don't spend much time each day or week on serious school work, 20 minutes a day or two a week is really all. Of course we are learning / teaching all day long, just not sitting down and formally learning.

Si le pregunta dónde están sus ojos que le apunta a los ojos.

(If you ask her where her eyes are, she will point to her eyes)

JoElle también sabe su nariz, la boca y la cabeza.

Officially we are on Letter N right now. She has masterd writing the letter M. The first time we tried it, she got extremely upset - she is very much a perfectionist. If she can't do it perfectly the first time, it makes her upset. We are working on staying calm and practicing and that is going pretty well. Yesterday she started to get upset that she couldn't put her baby's diaper back on, but she stopped herself from becoming frustrated and told me. I was proud of her!

Yesterday we talked about nurses and nests, practiced writing N and n. Later I had he write "Mama" and "Nana" and she did a great job writing both.

J is for Jesus and jellyfish

We have been covering various names for Jesus, where He was born, things of that nature.

In addition, we are learning about jellyfish for the letter J.

Some basic facts:

1. The jellyfish has large tentacles that hang bellow its body.
2. The body and tentacles are made up of gelatin type material and that is how it got its name.
3. The jellyfish eat small fish, as well as other jellyfish.
4. A jellyfish moves itself easily through the ocean by shooting water from its bell shaped body.

More detailed info:

Jellyfish are marine invertebrates belonging to the Scyphozoan class. The body of an adult jellyfish is composed of a bell-shaped, jelly producing substance enclosing its internal structure, from which the creature's tentacles are suspended. Each tentacle is covered with stinging cells (cnidocytes) that can sting or kill other animals: most jellyfish use them to secure prey or as a defense mechanism. Others, such as Rhizostomae, do not have tentacles at all. To compensate for its lack of basic sensory organs and a brain, the jellyfish exploits its nervous system and rhopalia to perceive stimuli, such as light or odor, and orchestrate expedient responses. In its adult form, it is composed of 94–98% water and can be found in every ocean in the world. Most jellyfish are passive drifters that feed on small fish and zooplankton that become caught in their tentacles. Jellyfish have an incomplete digestive system, meaning that the same orifice is used for both food intake and waste expulsion. They are made up of a layer of epidermis, gastrodermis, and a thick layer called mesoglea that produces most of the jelly and separates the epidermis from the gastrodermis.
Their shape is not hydrodynamic, which makes them slow swimmers but this is little hindrance as they feed on plankton, needing only to drift slowly through the water. It is more important for them that their movements create a current where the water (which contains their food) is being forced within reach of their tentacles. They accomplish this by rhythmically opening and closing their bell-like body.
Since jellyfish do not biologically qualify as actual "fish", the term "jellyfish" is considered a misnomer by some, who instead employ the names "jellies" or "sea jellies". The name "jellyfish" is also often used to denote either Hydrozoa or the box jellyfish, Cubozoa. The class name Scyphozoa comes from the Greek word skyphos, denoting a kind of drinking cup and alluding to the cup shape of the animal.

Letter B

We have been "working on" the letter B for several weeks- not that it takes JoElle that long to learn it, that took a few minutes, I just had too much going on with me. But today we finally learned to write B and b.

Some things covered today:

-practicing writing JoElle, the last e is a challenge for her
-writing B and b
-discussing the difference between b and d: b is a line then a circle, d is a circle then a line
-read the word "birthday" and the two words that comprise the word "birth" and "day"
- JoElle traced the B's and b's, then colored the B and b and the bee
- B makes the "buh" sound

This only takes us 10-15 minutes at the most.

Letter A: First week of "learning" our ABC's (and more...)

The Letter A: Big A, Little a, What begins with A?
Apple, alligator, ant, armadillo

Some of our activities:

-colored pictures of each word above
-learned to read each word
-talked about the different sounds that A makes
-hung the words on the wall along with our drawings
-began constructio nof our Word Wall
-learned to write big A and little a
-learned to spell JoElle's name out loud
-learned to write JoElle's name