She's a sponge

That saying about kids being sponges really is true. Stasa has such a thirst to learn. We noticed that she was having trouble properly pronouncing some of her letters and words and no matter how often we corrected her, she kept getting them wrong. Then we heard about this enrichment program at her daycare which she participated in a few times when they had an open spot. She LOVED it and the teacher said she was so eager to participate. The teacher gave us a folder with information about the program and told us that she thought Stasa was a good candidate for the class. Tom and I talked about it and decided that we'd enroll Stasa for at least a couple of months. 

At the beginning of August she joined Miss Ebby's Learning Adventures class with a couple of her classmates. They meet three times a week and focus on different letters and sounds using a lion hand puppet named Kelsey to make it fun. They also work on sitting nicely in their seats and taking turns answering questions. All things they'll need to be able to do in school (and something they'll continue to work on in Pre-K). Stasa brought home her own mini Kelsey puppet and book that she can work on at home. So now at bedtime we have her practice writing the different words in the book. She's already improved so much - she can correctly write her lowercase b and p, two letters she was writing backwards. And she's been working on all of her lowercase letters and getting them right most of the time. At the end of each week she brings home a Velcro letter for her Kelsey puppet (he has a Velcro spot on his tummy) as well as a report on what they worked on and suggestions for what we could do at home to reinforce the learning. My all-time favorite was "spread pudding on a baking sheet and use your fingers to practice writing the letter P." Yeah, not happening, she would just eat it. 

After the first week in the program Miss Ebby told us how much Stasa loves the class. We knew it - I mean she comes home chatting all about Mr M or how P makes the "puh" sound or what Kelsey the Lion said. Miss Ebby said Stasa is eager and the best student in the class. She eats learning for breakfast. (like that made any sense) Stas takes her "homework" seriously and is so proud to show us how well she's doing. Last night we worked on E. She usually writes her Es only in uppercase and with about five or six horizontal lines. This time she wrote it correctly each time and even wrote lowercase Es. So far I think this program is worth the money. I think Pre-K will help her a lot, too.