Kids

We discovered last night that Bear is quite the teacher.  The kids were both trying to sleep in Bear's room.  Mia has a thing about sleeping on the floor lately and the last several nights they have wanted to hang out in his room.  Fine with us so long as they are actually quiet and end up sleeping.  Last night it wasn't happening.

Mia was playing with Bear's little computer so Tom went in to take it from her.  Pretty soon he came out and says, "You have to come see this."  I wasn't sure what was going on but he told me that she had it set to a letter game where she had to find the letter and type it in.  He said she had just gotten four in a row with no help.  Of course I had to go see.

So we go in there and Bear was sitting on the floor with her.  The computer would ask her a letter and she would look for it.  If she didn't know the letter or was having a hard time finding it she would say, "I don't know," or "I can't find it."  At this point Bear would say, "She needs help."  We'd give the okay and then he would tell her, "The S is next to the T."  He wouldn't just point it out or push it for her.  He would still make her find it and make it so she was learning other letters too.  He's a natural.

And she didn't need much help.  I'm not sure when she learned letters but she needed very little help from her brother.  She is barely older than two and can recognize most of her letters she can consistently count to 5 by herself and to 10 with help and is a serious chatter-box.  Most people do not expect her to be only two.  If we are in town I get asked if she is about 3 all the time.  Of course it must run in the family because everyone thinks Bear is about 6 and he isn't even 5 yet.

Bear is working on reading.  He does pretty well with the simple books like Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss.  The three letter words are great right now.  Both kids love books so much that I don't think it will take either long to learn to read.  I'm pretty tickled about their love of books.  Even if there are times I wish they didn't have so many out and scattered all over the house.

Let's see, what else?  Bear is working on learning to ride a bicycle and Mia is working on learning the tricycle.  Mia is more or less potty trained.  She still wears a diaper at night since she doesn't always wake up.  Of course there are a few accidents here and there but she hasn't worn a diaper during the day for quite awhile.  Even during naps she's usually good.