After several close tries, Sofia finally passed off all her letters and corresponding sounds to earn the much sought after and highly regarded Alphabet Crown. The testing process is no easy task requiring a double pass off not only with the class teacher, Ms. Heather, but then also with the preschool director herself, Ms. Mimi in her office.
Seeing how close she had been to attaining this goal for several weeks, Ray encouraged her by promising her a Daddy and daughter outing to the movies once she earned the Crown. When I went to pick her up from school that Thursday, the alphabet crown was not even on my mind after the recent misses, so much so that it didn't even dawn on me when I saw her already standing outside proudly with Ms. Heather smiling from ear to ear and wearing, in fact, the infamous paper crown.
When she got in the car and Ms. Heather excitedly told me the news, I congratulated her gratuitously of course. Sofia was very excited and asked where Daddy was right away. As if somehow, he should have materialized immediately upon her accomplishment to take her straight over to the movies. I told her that he was still at work of course and explained that even when he came home, they were still not likely to go to the movies that very same day and that it would probably be on the weekend. That was a bit of a let down for sure.
But when it was time to go to the movies, she decided she wanted everyone to come. So we did. We went to see Bolt at the dollar movie. Remind me not to do that again with little kids. Even I had a hard time sitting through the extra half an hour of previews before the real previews, before the movie. Sofia was fine, it was Marcelo that was basically done with the movies by the time the actual movie started. I smuggled some home made popcorn and drinks in (you have to pinch pennies somewhere to have the luxe life that we do, you know). Sofia ate the entire bag less one kernel that she generally offered to me three quarters of the way into the movie. I didn't mind, it was her day after all and she enjoyed the movie from beginning to end.
This is the sheet they use to pass of the letters and other skills. Sofia knows her colors and most of the shapes. You must first have your Alphabet Crown to start blending letters, so she will be learning this next.
Certainly there is room for improvement. Also, I don't know whether I should be impressed or perplexed that she can "Always" subtract one from numbers under five, but needs "One-on-one guidance" to add one to numbers under five.
In the summer we are considering a Spanish language immersion preschool which she already took for a test drive a few weeks ago. I only spent the first half hour with her at the McKee Language School but I couldn't get the "Soy una pizza" song out of my head for weeks. She was rather shy at first, but still reservedly wanting to see what it was all about. The classes are structured so that they rotate through six different activity types every fifteen minutes or so (Greeting and weather, Kitchen, Arts & Crafts, Drama, Shop, and Shopping). When the children participate in short conversations with each other and the teacher, they receive tokens which they can use to shop with at the end of each day. Sofia was very intrigued when she saw the teacher giving out tokens and the children putting them in their little fanny pack style bags. The teacher tried to get Sofia to participate several times while I was there but she wasn't ready to say anything. However, when they moved on to the "Kitchen" room, the bananas and yogurt snack got her talking immediately.
Suddenly she was having such a good time that she readily said "Yes" when I asked her if she wanted to stay for the whole class time and have me come back and pick her up later. When I came back, I was almost shocked to see she had a respectable number of tokens, I helped her count them and she purchased a bouncy ball.
It will be a lot of driving. The classes will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the afternoon in Orem. But hopefully, it will be worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment