Skills

Ran out of time to post last night, so here is post 1 of 2 (at least) for today:

A couple of weeks ago, Jacob's teacher sent home a few worksheets with a some evaluations she had done on the children to see where they were at in a few areas. 4 of the sheets were for identifying upper and lower case letters, numbers up to 20, and colors. Of course, Jacob aced all 4, as he actually learned them all at a very young age.

It got me thinking though about Luke and evaluating him as well. I knew he could identify all of his upper case letters (he got that down a few months ago) but I wasn't sure where we stood with lowercase letters, numbers, or colors. I was completely amazed at what he was able to do.

• He knew about 6 of the 8 colors on the first pass, but missed a couple different ones in the second pass (getting the ones right he previously missed), and got them all right on the 3rd pass. Definitely needs a bit more work on the colors. Overall, I am impressed with it.

• He needs work on numbers. I would say only about 5-7 were right and he didn't sound so sure of himself on those. I'm glad to know what we can focus on for now.

• He only knew just over half of the lowercase letters, but that doesn't surprise me as we rarely, if ever, talk about those. The ones that look like their uppercase letters are gimmes, but he did know a few others as well.

• Where I was completely amazed was when we did the uppercase letters (which we did first.) Not only did he quickly and easily identify each letter correctly, but he followed each letter name with the sound it makes! Only getting 2 of the sounds wrong! This kid is ready for phonics! I was really proud of him and told him, and he was just beaming from ear to ear. Guess kids really do pick up stuff when you just tell them things and don't sit down and try to teach.