4 years + 9 months

 

Emily has become a full-fledged reader this month.  On the 4th of July she declared that she was "a grown-up reader" and from then on has been able to read pretty much anything she picks up.  When her new Highlights High Five magazine came in the mail this month, she read the whole thing to my mom with the exception of the Spanish words in one of the stories.  (She has since attempted to pronounce them whenever we come across them.)  Her reading is fluent and with expression.  I'm am continually amazed and thankful that God has blessed her with this ability. 

While amazing, Emily's reading is definitely not perfect, which leads to some funny things.  The most recent that makes me laugh every time is a story with a character called Aunt Cecilia.  Emily can't quite seem get it right and usually ends up saying "Aunt Ce-celery."

Along with reading, Emily continues to be fascinated with writing.  I bought some cheap notebooks and she has been filling them with all kinds of words and lists and stories.  She was very proud of herself last week when she finally figured out how to correctly write a lower-case "a".  Up until this point she had mainly avoided it and used exclusively an upper-case "A".  She still usually misses the first "n" in Lorenzen, and writes her "z's" backwards, but we're working on that. 

Emily has also started to become interested in geography.  She likes drawing maps and labeling places.  Minnesota usually ends up generally north of Iowa.  The rest is kind of a mish-mash.  To help this along, I recently purchased a large U.S. map poster.  We hung it up downstairs and put star stickers on all the cities Austin has been to with his new job.  It's quite amazing considering it has only been 8 months (click to zoom in)!  A world map was also included.  Emily thought it was pretty funny that there was a place called Turkey!

The "Why?" question has come out more this month than ever before.  Emily was late in starting it and must be making up for lost time.  Your gut instinct is to start answering it right away.  However, when I start to get frustrated I have to remind myself that sometimes she doesn't necessarily want/need to know the answer.  It's just a reaction on her part, too.  It's funny when she tries to explain the meaning of words or answer the "why" questions herself, which she often does.

At the beginning of the month Emily would spend most of suppertime conducting quiz shows.  Austin was usually the blue team and I was the red team.  She'd ask questions and give multiple choice answers, but the "correct" answer was usually not one of the choices.  So it was pretty much rigged and she did whatever she wanted.  Austin & I would usually play along for awhile, but eventually start making rules about how many bites of supper or sips of milk she had to take before she could ask the next question.  Understandably, she was always the last one done.  Thankfully, that little phase has passed.

Emily continues to make baby steps in the swimming department as we have made a conscious effort to get to a pool more often.  We'll probably try lessons again in the fall.  She also continues to have a variety of imaginary friends.  Lily was still probably the favorite this month, but there have been some newer ones lately.  Emily is able to acknowledge that they are imaginary, though. 

We look forward to one more month of summer fun before starting preschool again in September!  Note: In her picture, Emily is wearing the new dress Grandma Lorenzen got her for preschool. :o)