Esme bits

Yesterday she had this idea she was going to glue her plastic farm animals into a box and take it to school.  I vetoed the plastic animals, and told her she could draw animals and I would help her cut them out and glue them onto the box.  She refused, at first, to draw anything - saying it was too hard.  Finally, after much sulking and staring at the tv, she tried several times to draw a cow.  She was messing up almost on purpose it seemed - frustrated about this head being too big, or that neck being too long, or that smudge between those legs meaning it was all ruined etc...  She fussed and fraggled about it for a while.. and then we had dinner and I insisted she come back to it and try again.  She did, and completed with a nice job.  We glued it on to the box and put it in her bag for the morning.

At the beginning of this week she had told me the dentist at school said to brush morning and night, so you do not stink in the morning and the 'sugar bugs' don't eat your teeth at night.  So, Monday and Tuesday were not trouble - she brushed her teeth, and was fairly happy about doing so... but she didn't get to make the farm drawing before school because of all the time she took brushing her teeth... so the glamour wore off.  Today it was a sulky fight to get her to hold to her word she would brush all week.  But, she did it.  We'll see how this goes.  It would be great if she could get in the habit of doing both - it was so hard to get her into the habit of brushing at night but that finally sunk in.

She has been taking on a lot more responsibility these past few months -- bringing her lunchbox home and putting it where it goes, homework then play, taking her bath and washing her hair almost every single night (which it is down to her waist so it is a task), packing her own lunch with minimal help, brushing her teeth night (and morning, now, we hope), putting her lunch in her backpack in the morning when it is time to go... it is a lot for her, but it is good to see her capabilities develop.  She even has been trying, without success, to tie her own shoes.

Last night we introduced her to Algodoo, a physics/mechanics free program.  She picked up on things right away - here and there, drawing circles and gears and bars and chains, liquifying to play with water, adding motors to make things turn, cutting items with the knife and making lasers that cut things in motion.  She made a 'stomach' with a chain and water and used a laser to make it 'throw everything up'.  Ha.  She said cutting the piece of ice that floated in the water was just like ice cubes in the lemonade.  The really cool thing is once we showed her something she remembered how to do it almost perfectly, would restart the scene from scratch and do it herself to have it all done her way, and was having such a good time she didn't want to stop.

Happening around here...

Esme's reading skills are getting much better, and her math skills, as well.  I still don't know what if anything they are working on with her at school but she is diving deeper into her computer games like Starfall and PBS kids after school and calling them 'the best games ever.'  This morning she was standing at our kitchen counter eating her pre-bus snack and staring hard at the contents of the back of the counter while chewing.  I asked her what she was looking at, and she swallowed, then said out loud 'start with clean coffee maker and cold fresh water.'  She was reading the instructions on the coffee can.  She missed the word 'Always' and then said 'Steep by steep' for the 'step by step.'

 But, she can read fairly well - and it has become more and more evident the past few weeks as she notices writing on everything and is paying attention to what it says/could say to her.  She asked me why the drawings in her room from last year had tiny writing on the edges and why I didn't tell her it was there before -- it is my writing her name and date.  She got mad at me for that for several hours.. until I reminded her that she saw me write it back then and wasn't mad - so she shouldn't be mad about it now.  *roll eyes*

We started a chapter book last night on Daddy's half-mocking suggestion - thinking it would make her go to bed quicker.  Nope.. she was bouncing monkey style on her bed hanging from the canopy after the first few pages but I continued reading because she was interested in the story 'Wizard of Oz' and I could catch her eyes and get her to look at pictures or words here and there.  We read through the second chapter - and I asked her recap what had happened.  She told me she wanted Mom to redraw the pictures on new paper with colors, because they were black and white and rather roughly done.... I thwarted that with 'someday, not soon.'  She still doesn't get the concept of 'soon'... asked me about that the other day again - 'what is soon...'  'it is earlier than later, a few minutes, I'll get you out of the bathtub soon, etc..' 

We did some math the other day as well - she knows what the '+' and '=' means.  I think that is from Starfall as she is only getting 'trace the number' and 'draw one more shape' at school.  She piped up in one of our conversations where I had used the word 'addition' to tell me about those signs and that is what that is about, Mama.  She got almost every one of the one digit equations right that I asked her - and wrote me a couple as well including '2 + 20 = ?  Then she argued with me it could not be twenty-two... guess she felt that was cheating putting twenty and two together... then Mark said it really was, and I think I saw the 'light' in her eyes as she realized 'putting together'='addition' twenty-two...

I actually felt like I could start teaching her more about multiplication and other things a while back - she might be ready for it... but it might sabotage what they do at school although I don't know how....  it is so hard to tell because her homework still comes home 'color in the lines' and 'you didn't finish this' etc etc... She has the ability but I don't know how they are coming at her in the group of twenty-five.  I don't know if showing them what she can do will make them ignore what she needs help with (handwriting, by far.. she hates it) or push her harder like we do at home to get past the stubborn layer.   I made her finish one of the sheets that said 'not finished' last night with her homework and Mark thought it could be cruel... to add to her homework as much as I do .. but it doesn't seem cruel to me, because she is smart in those ways, and needs to be responsible as well, learn to complete things, to be neat, to write even if it seems hard, to follow the class rules etc.  That is what Kindergarten is going to be about for her, instead of learning 123 and ABC...

I should have been making her dress today because I close at the store tonight... but all I wanted was sleep...  had to write down a few of these before I forget them and wonder 'when' this happened.