Writing, reading and drawing

I didn't really teach Lara to write before kindy started. Lara learned to trace letters in daycare but was not taught the alphabets. I was happy to leave the formal learning until school started. Lara slowly learned to write all the letters (capitals and smalls). After two terms, she now writes quite well, with most sentences started with Capital letters, only occasionally mixed up capital and small letters.On a good day, Lara writes neatly with letters in similarly sizes and the right 'finger spaces' between each word.

A couple of school mums had commented to me about how neat Lara's writings were.  I saw her improvements when I saw the 'Hansel and Gretel' story she wrote. Lara has good imagination and writes interesting sentences. She received a deputy principal's award last term for her story on "yo you and the zoo". The occasional mistakes, like writing 9 like letter P or 2 the wrong way (more like a 5) were alright as long as there are improvements.


So far I have taken a relaxed attitude towards sight words (the 100 words they have to learn in kindy?). There are so many things to do between the time we get home (sometimes close to 6pm!) and bed time, including cook dinnner (while look for food to give kids to eat, they are just very hungry when they get home!), eat dinner, get Sam to bed (usually Simon's job), practice violin (with Lara), homework (some nights), readers, bath/brush teeth and bed time story. Sight words are usually forgoteen! Lara was not the slowest, but not in the top half of the class as far as sight words are concerned. While we read readers, I noticed Lara can sound (with guesses or help from the pictures) most words, even those not in her sight words. My execuse is I'd rather her learning the words properly from a book than memorising them on a sheet of paper. Most of the time I feel Lara has enough on her plaste already and she is doing well at 5. Other times, I wonder whether I should perhaps spend more time with her on reading and writing.

We receivd Lara's first school report at the end of last term. I admit I was a little disappointed that everything was 'meet expectations' and all efforts were 'satisfactory' but there was no 'exceed expectations' or 'extraordinary efforts' in any subject. Simon reminded me that he didn't 'get it' with maths until 10 or 11. I did quite well from primary school, but we didn't start school until 7 in Taiwan. I have to remind myself that Lara is still very young at five years old, and that it is more important she enjoys her childhood than worry about the grades.



Lara enjoy drawings, painting and drafts. Her drawings of animals are more correctly-proportioed now. She needs to learn to be patient and not get too upset when her artwork doesn't turn out as she likes sometimes.