this girl

she continues to amaze us. you would think that having a degree in early childhood education and working in this field with 3-6 year olds for over 10 years would mean that not much would surprise me. but when it's your own child.....it's all pretty much amazing.

we all know that our girl can read. i mean, READ. like chapter books. it's crazy.
and she can compose words with the moveable alphabet at school, using wooden letters to "write" words.
but now she is starting to put pen (marker) to paper and actually physically write. STORIES.

she didn't want me to take a picture of her story, but i had to. the part in black says, "one day a princess climbed a tree and fell and a prince saved her"
look closely. very closely. and you can see some of the words. "wun da"(one day) are the first two words. and you can see "tee" at the end of the first line (tree). and the last few letters in black say "sav hr" (save her).
yes, she's got a ways to go to get from phonetic spelling to conventional. but give her a break. she just turned four.
we think she's amazing.
even with green crayon on her teeth and mucus running out of her nose.

refining her skills

greta has been writing her name more. here is her latest version.....

she keeps on writing

after greta wrote "greta", she wrote mama (the bottom photo), otto and papa (the top photo, otto on top and then papa below it). she sounded out mama and papa on her own, so she actually wrote "M O M O" and "P O P O", since the sounds she hears in those words are the short 'o' sound (like in hot or dog).

way to go greta! this was really hard work for her, and she worked so hard and was so proud. it takes a TON of strength and control to be able to manipulate a pencil to write letters.

greta writes greta

tonight while i was cleaning up after dinner, greta was at her easel. she asked if i could help her write an "r". she said she was writing her name and had already written the g. i showed her how to write an r, and then she wrote it next to the g she had already written. then she said, "i know what comes next and i know how to write it" and she wrote an "e" and a "t". then she asked me how to write an "a", so i showed her and then she wrote one. and here it is....
g...r...e...t...a. she wrote her name all by herself!! can you see it? i could stare at this picture forever, i think it's so amazing. and she was so proud. i mean, SO proud. and guess what she did next??

greta writes

greta told me she was going to write some letters today. she would write a random shape (or it seemed random) on the magna doodle and then either she or i would comment what letter it looked like. she drew many many O's...and a few other letters as well. i couldn't tell if it was actually random or if she was trying to form letters. and then she said, "i'm going to write my name" and she wrote these two shapes. then she said, "i wrote a G and a T. do you see my G and my T?" i was so shocked....it was pretty amazing. she was SO proud! i took the video below after the initial moments, so i am still so excited (as you can tell by the pitch of my voice, sorry) and she has sort of moved on. but still....
in the class i am teaching this summer we have talked about encouraging children to view themselves as writers, and i think i experienced it first hand today.