Reading and other random thoughts

I spent Monday with my niece Sophie. It was interesting. She's pretty funny. It really amazes me to see how kids learn. I know that I watch kids learn things everyday at school but seeing Sophie develop and learn is so amazing. She loves the Llama Llama books. She asked to read Llama today so we sat in a chair and read Llama Llama and she wanted to read Pete the Cat. The greatest part was when she took the book and read it to me. It was so cool to see how she knows to hold the book and to say things at different pages. I made a video of her reading to me. I think I have it uploaded to work. She's a mess.



I wish I could show this video to all my incoming kindergarteners parents before they have their children. My sister and brother in law have read to Sophie since she was born. I think they've already read her Harry Potter. She has had the routine of reading before bed since she was born. So she knows how the books work. We are lucky enough where we live to have a program where she gets sent a new book each month. It's the Dolly's Imagination Library program. You can find out more information by going to their website. The great thing is the books they send are good books. Llama Llama Red Pajama came from the Imagination Library. It doesn't hurt that Sophie has an aunt who teaches kindergarten and first grade and a grandmother who is a principal of a primary school. She's going to like books and reading whether she does or not. Watching her grow and develop, just makes it more obvious to me what a difference it can make for a child to be read to at home and these very early learning experiences are so important. We play with letters, blocks, play doh and explore things. I try to talk to her about colors, numbers, letters, and shapes. This past year my kindergartners really struggled with their verbal skills and oral language development. I had one student who was an ELL student but he wasn't speaking English or Spanish. He was just speaking jibberish at the beginning of the year. When I talked to his mom, she said he had watched a cartoon for a lot of his early life that didn't use words on it. He lived in Honduras with family while she was in the United States working. But by the end of the year he was speaking in English complete sentences and telling me about things. It was amazing to see the progress he made and that sometimes his language development was a lot like Sophie's. I'm even more excited to get the chance to see how far we can go with this student  next year in first grade.
Ok so I guess I've rambled along enough about things that I'm sure you agree with.
I'm pretty excited about all the upcoming Daily 5 book studies. I'm not really sure which to partcipate in. I just finished Kindergarten and implemented some of the Daily 5 but next year I'll be a first grade teacher. Maybe I'll do a hybrid of both. I'm feeling a little loss of identity between kindergarten and first grade.
Wedding update: Chris and I got out wedding license today and I tried on my dress and everything. Chris's aunt put my sleeves on my dress and I picked it up last week. They don't fit. I need them taken in a bit. Good thing I tried the dress on today. Hopefully she can take care of it tomorrow.  I spent a good part of my day cleaning out from under the bed and organizing my closet more. So hopefully we'll be ready to move beds around and get our new mattress. I'll be back tomorrow with more about Daily 5.