Amy’s Garden

Learning

I majored in elementary education in college, and I think that was a good thing. I am fascinated by watching little people learn.

Today Lydia was playing with her Memory cards. I bought these for her two Christmases ago. She’s still not really ready to play the game the way it is intended, but we have fun with the cards. For the past few days, she has been riding her tricycle outside. She picked up a Memory card with a tricycle on it and said, “Look, this must be a tricycle, because it has two wheels in back and one wheel in front.”

I said, “How many wheels does the whole tricycle have?” She pointed at random places on the card and counted to five. “Five!”

I said, “Do it again.”

She pointed one by one at the two wheels in the back, and said, “One, two.” Then she pointed at the wheel in the front and said, “One!”

Isn’t it interesting that she divided the back wheels and front wheel into two distinct categories that could not be combined, even for counting? I showed her how the whole tricycle has three wheels, and we talked about how bicycles have two wheels and tricycles have three wheels. She was pretty interested in comparing tricycles to bicycles, since she has a princess tricycle, and our new neighbor girl has a princess bicycle. They have different princesses on them, which is also a source of compare/contrast discussion, but I won’t bore you with the all the details that fill our daily conversation around here.

Luke has been enjoying the Baby Einstein Alphabooks he got for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa. (See the sidebar for a picture. Also, a reminder about my Amazon links.) Lydia had a set of very similar alphabet books from Discovery Toys, but a few were missing, so Luke got a brand new set of his very own. (The set Lydia had doesn’t seem to be available anymore.)

These books are just the right speed for Luke. They are easy for him to handle and a quick read. Each books has three words. There is one book for each letter of the alphabet.

Luke is really good at sitting and reading a book by himself. Sometimes I’ll wonder what he’s up to and expect to find him banging on the blinds or putting playdough in his mouth (that happens too), but he’s sitting in the living room reading a book. What a good boy.

Even though Luke is really good at reading to himself, the sweetest thing is when he hands me a book and asks me to read it to him.

Learning is serious business, you know.