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There She Grows

Lil always speaks positively about her pre-school teachers and friends; she absolutely loves it. So I don’t believe she is actively involved yet in too much exclusionary play while interacting with the other kids there. However, its apparently common and expected behavior for the 4-5 yr old set, in general as well as at her school. Lil is already keen on watching and learning from everything the older girls do, so its something to think about.

This article on BecomingtheParent.com, sent out by her pre-school, is a good quick read on the subject. It highlights a few different causes of this behavior and ways to handle it from each of those perspectives.

Well, more like a very blurry iphone shot taken of her first class photo as it hangs on our fridge. I should really scan it one day. Its adorable, and a bit of a milestone as the very first of a whole childhood full of class photos she’ll collect over the years. I still have an old folder full of mine someplace at my mom’s house and its a trip to look back at them.

Her pre-school peers currently range in age from about 2 to almost 5. I remember how small she was compared to the others when she first started at 18 months. And how brazen she was despite that, fitting herself right in immediately. Now she’s an old pro and has welcomed new students as older ones have departed. Can you spot our little sweetie’s big smile?

Oh, how she loves school. It fills me with so much joy. We had an extended break over the holidays, since we took off for Chicago in mid December. With so much going on, it was awhile before she started missing her school routine. Once the whirlwind of family fun began to subside, she started pretending she and I were having circle time in the green room, like they do in school. She wanted to sing together her morning school song… and sometimes when she was playing on her own I overheard her mention her school friends names as if she was playing with them. It was really sweet, and we were both happy about her return to school this Tuesday.

To be honest, I was ready to return to the preschool routine as well. It gave me 1 day of non-mom-time during my sister’s fun visit here. There is SO much I need to catch up posting about. Lots of Big Kid achievements, a new playhouse down the street and new friends, Lil’s first trip to the dentist… and all our travel and family visits throughout the holidaze. I’ll get to some of it eventually.

note to self: Hello do a day, sir.

It seems her too-early mastery of the English language has started to make the whole thing seem old hat. Because Lil has begun making up her own new language entirely. Just experimenting I guess, but its hilarious/awesome. It started awhile ago, and she’s expanded upon it since. When she plays around with her Lilahspeak, we can usually tell what she’s conveying but its definitely her own brand new words. And often, she plays with rhyming. Its like she’s got her own cockney rhyme slang going. She’ll substitute a rhyming word in place of another word in a sentence, and crack herself up doing it. Or she’ll play around with letters and sounds: muh mar mu moing min mere, mommy? instead of what are you doing in there. Its funny when others hear this kind of stuff occur, they think its her cute silly 2-yr old way of trying to speak. And I think she gets a kick out of that, too. Fooling people. Its like a little secret.

Its also a reminder to me that I have to get this kid some Spanish. She’s just so rife for new language challenges right now and there’s no excuse if I don’t give her that opportunity. Sure, unlike so many other kids around these parts, we don’t have a spanish-speaking Nanny to accomplish this. But its not like I don’t have years of school spanish vocab in the vault somewhere. There’s plenty I can teach her, translation-wise, but she needs to hear it in context from real spanish speakers. I’ve enlisted her good friends next door to speak to her only in Spanish but that hasn’t panned out so far. I don’t think they realized I was serious.

I took her to a session of Habla Blah Blah, a spanish-immersion music class for little ones (how awesome is that name?). The class itself did not seem worth enrolling in right now but the songs are perfect. So we got their CD (thanks karen!), and it has quickly become Lilah’s most requested car music. She’s heard it 3 or 4 times and has already started to sing along to parts. Lil has an uncanny knack for remembering songs and loves to sing them. I try to tell her what everything in the songs means; she is quite intrigued. She gets some of it. Mostly I think she just loves the fun voices and catchy tunes, but this is a start. What other great spanish kids music is out there?

Oh and by the way, Lil knows one thing in Hebrew: L’Chaim!

Near our dining room table is an Obama poster that says Progress along the bottom.  Lilah will occasionally point and exclaim, “letter P!” during a meal.  If we ask her what comes next she will say R, and then O!  She isnt’ too sure about the G.

She loves to play with her letter-oriented toys.  She has letter books.  bathtub letters.  fridge letters.  a really cool alphabet puzzle.     The other day, I quietly watched her tinkering around with her letters puzzle.  She picked up the M and said “M”.  Then the W, and said, “W”.  Then she examined them side by side, rotated the W to look like M, rotated the M to look like W.  She then tried to fit them back in the puzzle in their opposite places, and of course they nearly fit that way.    She has also been noting the similarities and differences between  B, P and R.   I love peeking in on these little moments.   And there are so many, every single day, that are like little gems melting my heart.

At first all letters were A to Lilah, then everything was B.  Now she can correctly identify several. But still not all.  My mom tells me I was naming all the letters in the alphabet by the time I was 19 months.   I am quite certain Lilah would be there as well, if I was the diligent & determined teacher that my mom is.   Yes, I was also an early talker apparently, but I think Lilah has far surpassed me in that regard.   She’ll have all my strongpoints combined with all of Mike’s and shall therefore be unstoppable.  I know that is what every parent says.  So why should I be any different, hehe. And she’ll have none of our weaknesses.  Sha!  Thats a laugh.  Lets just say, she is already is a lot like her mommy in many many ways, both good and potentially bad.  I love it though.

So far Lilah continues to enjoy school.   On tuesday and thursday mornings she repeats ’school? school?’ over and over as we drive across the neighborhood to Segray.  I ask, who are you going to see at school? and she responds, ‘friends! bunnies! teacher anette!’    Her excitedness about going there is all I could ask for.

During her school day there is lunch time (the children bring their lunch from home), nap time (they lay on an array of mats strewn across the floor), music time (a special teacher shows up on Tuesday mornings with his guitar) and lots and lots of playtime.   There is also structured learning time.   Each week there is a letter of the alphabet featured.  On thursday it was the letter Q, and she got into the car that afternoon gleefully yelling ‘Q! Queen!’  over and over.

The kids do projects as well.  Last week they created an earthquake preparedness kit (side effect of LA life!) and often she brings home little works of art.  The other day it was a plastic shark she had painted green.  And  on Thursday I was delighted to see this collage in her little bin.  Lilah’s very first collage, hehe. It has a prominent new home on our brand new fridge.

I’ve already noticed some new things Lilah now knows, that I’m sure she learned at school.   The last time she sneezed she said, ‘excuse me.’  I never taught her that one.   And the other night at dinner she requested that i remove the sippy top from her cup.   I did, and handed the cup back to her.  She held it with both hands and successfully drank like a big girl.   I know she learned how at school; they don’t use sippy cups there so she pretty much had no choice.  I didn’t realize she would pick it up so quickly though.    Since that night, we’ve given her the chance to drink from a cup big-girl style several times and she is clearly capable.  But she still gets a bit crazed after awhile and throws the water around so we have to keep the sippy tops nearby.

This week, Lilah started at a new daycare/preschool place.   After looking into several local options and attending a preschool forum some time ago I had finally decided on Segray, an adorable little place right in our neighborhood that naturally transitions from a daycare to a preschool.     I love the fact that there is a small number of children and the variety of unique activities they do there.   We’re starting with 2 days a week and may increase that over time.. once I start makin some money.

After our first daycare attempt went awry due to bad timing, I was fairly apprehensive.   We went for a little preliminary tour of the school, during which Lil was able to spend over an hour blending in with their typical day.  She seemed to throw herself right in with no problem.  That was a great sign!  I went back for one more prelim visit, when I filled out all the paperwork. Again they let us stay awhile so she got to have a second practice day, and seemed thrilled to participate in everything the other children were doing.   Seemed like a great fit! Here are some photos of her mixing right in with the other kids on those first visits. She’s the youngest of them all, so she’s the small one, lol.

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Wall-E.  Finding Nemo.  The Bee Movie.  Sesame Street.  Thomas & Friends.  Curious George.  Martha Speaks.

when watching these things she gets totally involved. she seems to understand everything going on and constantly learns.  she verbalizes everything she sees and constantly asks us questions about it.   she sings and dances with elmo.      she is obsessed with trains and can’t wait for thomas.   she reacts so adorably to the powerful elements of wall-e that it makes my heart swell up to experience it with her.   she laughs out loud at silly things in the bee movie.  she knows exactly what is going on with nemo and yells at the screen like she is hood.

what an expressive daughter we have, lol.    and thanks to sesame street she counts in the teens now.   there is a reason that show has stood the test of time and has been loved as a learning tool for generation after generation.  we’re still fans, all over again. 

Aside from those three movies and the pbs kids shows, the only other television we watch with Lilah is nature shows, particularly those about animals.  she loves animals soooooo much and is extremely interested in them.   i am sure that some parents think any television or movies at this age are a bad idea… but we just can’t deny how much she enjoys and clearly is learning a lot from this stuff.