Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A year of school - and a milestone

And before I know it, a year has flown past, and my little girl has finished the first year of school. She is looking forward to the summer holidays, because, in her words, "I love school, I love my friends, but sometimes, I feel like staying at home and playing with Amma." Don't we all? :)

She's had a whole lot of fun this past year. She's made friends, and learned to speak English. She knows the English alphabets and the numbers.

Oh, and one major, exciting milestone. She has started to read! They haven't taught her reading at school, but I gathered that they have taught her phonics.

But they haven't taught her small letters, so she came to me asking me which letter is which, she kind of gathered which small letter corresponds to which capital letter.

When I read out to her at home, she frequently asks me what a certain word is, and I read it out to her using phonics. So, somehow, she's absorbed the concept, and she surprised me the other day by reading out "Dog" on her own. I was initially sceptical, thinking it was a fluke, but then she read out "frog" "start" and other such words. It is a wonderful, heady feeling - to watch a child make sense of something.

Now it is quite common for me to hear from the next room an excited, loud voice saying.. "Sssss.....pppppp.... Sp... Sp..... iii.. Spi.... Spi..... dddddd... Spiddddd... Spid... eee... Spideeee... Spide..... rrrrrr... Spider.... Amma, amma!! Is this Spider? Amma!!"

Like I said, exhilarating.

And then a few days ago, she stationed me near her blackboard, made me the teacher, and commanded me to write words on the board, which she would read. The success rate was quite high, especially when I wrote down the names of her friends. Then she took over the mantle of teacher, asked me to close my eyes and wrote this:



Just to eliminate fluke, I pretended not to understand.. and she gave me a clue - "An animal, Amma!" and answered it herself... Fox :)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

So cute, and yes it's so lovely!
They grow so fast, dammit :(
ano

R said...

lols..how sweet!

snippetsnscribbles said...

heehee :D So sweeeet :)

PeeVee said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAH :D "Focs"! I love it!

Sachin said...

Loved the "FOCS"; am sure you did too!

At my end, my 2 year old Sherry pointed to a huge mountain of footwear accumulated when my parents, brother, his wife, my in laws, sis-in-law and another 2 friends had come home and said for the first time ever with just the right tone "Kitna saaara chappal hai"..... hilarious but touching....

Anonymous said...

ur puttachi is cute. How old is she?

Shruthi said...

Ano, my thoughts exactly!

Thanks, everyone!

Anon, she will turn four in May.

Veena Shivanna said...

Professor, I am remembering the bangarada manushya dialogue by Dwarkish. PUT put aadre CUT cut (read accordingly) alva?

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