Not only can she identify all the letters with ease, but she's gotten very good at identifying the way they sound. A favorite game is to come up with words and figure out what letter they start with, and she's almost always right. And it's not just memorization of certain words - for instance, something will catch her eye as we're driving and she'll sound it out. She'll see a mailbox and say "mailbox" and then sound out the letters: "mmmmmailbox." And then, triumphantly, "M! It starts with M!"
We've also started practicing spelling smaller words with easily identifiable letters and sounds, like cat, dog and me. And once she learns a word, she'll pick it out in the text as we read books together. Slowly but surely she's putting this all together in her mind, and it's exciting to watch her figure it out.
She's also had some success with numbers. She's figured out that numbers generally repeat in tens, so she can pretty much count on her own indefinitely, with occasional help with every tenth number. I think she's counted up to 59 by herself, getting hung up on "sixty." But once I prompt her with that number, she'll continue on until she needs help with "seventy" and so on.
Aside from all the letters and numbers, we've had a terribly fun month. She's really gotten caught up in the excitement of fall and Halloween and has loved watching the season change.
Here are some pictures from the month:
Madeline flies a kite that she made during our annual weekend trip to a boat festival in St. Michael's, Md.
Madeline, in her role as space master, explains concepts from one of her space books to a captive audience.
By the time we made it to the apple orchard this month, many of the lower fruits had been picked clean. So Madeline helped me reach the higher apples.
We also picked up our annual pumpkin during the trip to the orchard.
Madeline soaked up the activities at the kids' area of the Richmond Folk Festival on a gorgeous fall weekend.
The weather has been so nice that we spent many an afternoon just hanging out on Madeline's swingset in the backyard.
We also made an impromptu trip to the zoo, scrapping our planned trip to the salon when we woke up to perfect weather. Madeline gathered her courage to feed the giraffes, which were very friendly.
The giraffes were also very tall.
Madeline got a kick out of leaping over every root in the trail during a weekend hike through the woods.
Madeline made a new friend when we got out the Halloween decorations - he was just her size.
Madeline got to go on two hay rides this month, and loved every minute of both of them.
Helping daddy carve Mr. Pumpkin.
All dressed up and ready to go, Madeline was a little butterfly for Halloween this year. She had a blast going from door to door - the candy was ancillary to the excitement of just ringing people's doorbells and showing off her wings.
Even though we only visited about a dozen houses in the neighborhood, Madeline scored enough candy to last a long time.
Madeline officially wrote her own name for the first time. She had some verbal guidance from mommy, but she did the writing all by herself.Madeline could hardly contain her excitement as she unpacked the contents of a goodie bag she received at her preschool Halloween party.
