reading, writing, and math

nina's hobbies these days. she's gotten very good at reading--books like easy dr. seuss (the ones without all the made-up words) or board books aimed at toddlers. she is also really good at sounding out words, but she doesn't like it so much, she gets bored quickly when the words are too difficult. actually, she gets bored with reading quickly no matter what. hopefully that's just a beginning reader thing, because i love reading! she started sounding out words 2 years ago, and was spelling and reading lots of 3 letter words last year. but over the past 6 months, she's jumped to where she readily recognizes lots of words and can sound out more difficult ones (like, say, "water.")

she enjoys math MUCH more. she's constantly quizzing everyone. "what's 3+4+5+4+6?" she'll say, and then answer "22!!" the other day i heard her from the kitchen listing off numbers, and then saying "25. is that right?" so i said, "i dunno, what numbers again?" and she said "5+6+4+5+5" and nick said "oh, close, that's 24." and i said, "no, that's 25." HA! she's better at math than nick now! lol. he claims he misheard the numbers, i'm not so sure...

she also does a great job with subtraction, and is figuring out the idea of multiplying (she'll say, "what's 3+3+3+3?" i point out that 4 threes is 12.) that kind of pointing out and giving her vocabulary (that minus is the same as take away, for example) is all i'm contributing to this. she really has driven this learning all on her own. she loves math! i'm so happy!!! i'm trying to give her more chances now to practice her math, so i'll do things like give her a handful of chocolate covered raisins and ask her to share them equally with maggie. it's no problem for her of course.

gosh, i hope she's not too bored in kindergarten next year! something tells me she won't be though. she enjoys doing tasks that she can already do well because i think she likes the feeling of being good at things. heck, when you're 4 and most of what you do in a day is difficult or new, feeling like a master at something must be a welcome change!