Wednesday, July 31, 2013

A halleluia moment - Joys of homeschooling

I have been trying to get Ziva to recognize her alphabets. It has been a painful experience. I keep reminding myself that she is ahead of her game with great vocabulary, excellent spatial skills, can pretty much beat any chap her age and size to a race and has figured out how to turn on 'livin la vida loca' on the keyboard!
But I still cannot give up the fact that by 18 months Isaac recognized all his alphabets. So I tried to push Ziva. But the little fireball resisted all the pushing.
Finally I gave up and switched gears. I phonically taught her the alphabets. We have an alphabet stack set from Baby Einstein. Each alphabet had a few words associated with it. So for instance ... A had apples, aeroplane and alligator. But to get my fireball's attention for longer than two seconds was very hard. I still tried a few alphabets everyday.




Today we came home from some shopping and I had purchased a plastic file that had the word 'PHEASANT' on it. We were sitting around the table eating Katti roll and Ziva was randomly pointing at the alphabets and singing the alphabet song. With minimal expectation I asked her.
Me: 'Ziva where is T for tiger'
Ziva: 'There it is!' pointing correctly to the T. My eyes light up. I look at Suresh ... he has pride floating around him.
Me:'Ziva where is P for Penguin' .....
Ziva moves her finger over the entire word and then points at P: 'There it is!'
Now I am overjoyed. I have a CD with the word MOD written on it.
Me: 'Ziva where is M for monkey'.
Ziva points to O: 'Hmmm thats O' She point to M ...'That W for whaler ' .... I know she got it flipped but Iwas still struggling to control my head growing into the size of a pumkin.
Isaac joins the game.
Isaac: 'Ziva where is D for dog'
Ziva: 'There it is!  D for dog ... D for dinosaur!'

Lesson complete! I could hear  Handel Messiah' Hallelujah in my head

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