First Day of Pre-K!

Forest started Pre-K last week and I'm equal parts excited and emotional. Knowing this is the last year before Kindergarten is hitting me hard. As a stay-at-home mom, I feel like once your youngest/only child hits school age, its a mini empty-nest syndrome. Having an only child means experiencing every single milestone for the first and last time all at once. The preschool years have been so fun and I'm cherishing them and prematurely mourning the end of this season of life. 

But it hasn't all been flowers and rainbows, especially in terms of school. Forest has been veeeeeeery slow to warm up in the school setting which has caused lots of worry and wondering about his social development. I'm happy to say that this year seems to be getting off to a great start! He is talking to his teachers and making new friends and just looking more comfortable in general. No one loves school more than this kid and I hope that continues his whole life. 

Have a great year, sweet boy!

 

Four and 3/4! Almost 5?!?!?!?

Forest only has three months left as a 4 year old and he is counting down the days until his birthday. He's grown up so much in the past year, but especially over the last couple of months. He's super independent and can do so much by himself but is also becoming much more particular about things and giving SO much attitude.

We are getting a sneak peek of his teenage years for sure. 

Favorite Book: This kid is a voracious reader so picking one book is way too hard. 

He loves the Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems and anything Berenstain Bears. We've started going to the library at least once a week which has opened his eyes to a whole new world. He always picks a Magic Treehouse, Magic School Bus, and Curious George book and wipes the library clean of any and every Mo Willems or Berenstain Bears book in stock. 

Favorite TV Show: PJ Masks for sure. He is totally obsessed. His favorite character is Gekko and it's so extreme that he now insists on wearing green everyday. 

He still likes Octonauts and loves to rent Berenstain Bears DVDs from the library, and Wall-E is for sure still his favorite movie. 

Favorite Toy: PJ Masks Headquarters and characters/vehicles. His grandparents always make sure he has plenty of paraphernalia to fuel his latest obsession. #onlychildproblems  He is also really into card games/board games so will play Spot it, Memory, Guess Who, Skipbo, Uno, Candyland, etc all day long. And he's back to trains and puzzle-mania.

Favorite Foods: Mac and Cheese. We went to Torchy's the other day and he boycotted ordering anything because they didn't have mac and cheese on the kid's menu. What kind of upstanding Mexican Restaurant doesn't serve Macaroni and Cheese?!?! The nerve of some people. 

Stats: 45.5 inches (96%), 46 lbs (85%). He can still wear size 5T shorts but other than that he is solidly shopping on the big kid side of the store and wearing size 6. He's actually technically a size 7 in some of our favorite brands. Waaaaaaaaah!!!!

so tall!!

Cutest sayings: "And also...." He uses that phrase a lot when he's giving his little monologue speeches. We always give him choices as a way to evade power struggles so he likes to flip the script on us and say '"Mom, I can either have a popsicle or a cookie for dessert. Those are your two choices. Does that sound like a good plan?" And one we hear A LOT is "I promise I'll take a nap tomorrow.' He is really great at 'using his words' and is pretty adorable when he says things like 'Mom, it's just making me feel really frustrated that you interrupted me doing my puzzle to tell me it's lunch time.' and speaking of puzzles, when I saw that it was past bedtime but he was close to finishing a 100 piece puzzle I said 'you know what, go ahead and finish.' He replied "Thanks for letting me finish mom. It feels really great to get to finish something I already started on." So stinkin sweet.

New Skills: So much! He is doing a really good backstroke, free style, side glide and stream-line swimming. He's always been a strong swimmer but he's getting swim team ready (though he may need to improve his speed)! 

We always said we'd start team sports at age 5 so he's taking that very seriously and we put him in some private lessons to get him ready. 

He's basically reading fluently and read his first chapter book recently (Magic Treehouse Afternoon on the Amazon, end of  2nd grade reading level). The highest level book he's read was a 'P Level' which is considered 3.9 grade level on the AR scale but he's really consistently and confidently reading at an end of 2nd grade level. IDK, but I think he's incredible and most importantly he is so proud of himself (even if he does stay up to all hours of the night reading...). 

One thing I really wanted to work with him on this summer were his fine motor skills. Everyday we color a picture, do a pencil control activity and do a puzzle or build something. He's gone from coloring chaotically to being able to color in the lines, he's writing all of his letters to where an outsider could *probably* read his handwriting,  and he is drawing much more clearly (though he mostly still draws Wall-E over and over again). 

His 'wall-e' apron. "The scribbles are the trash."

The great thing is that he's so proud of himself! He used to leave Sunday School and barely care about his monochrome craft that he did. Now he talks about how he colored it so good and why he choose the colors he chose and look at how good I drew my name, etc. 

His hand eye coordination is also a little behind his peers, but has come a long way this summer! He took a tennis camp and loved it. It was incredible how much his hand eye coordination improved just by spending 2 hours a day working on drills that focused on them. It made me realize that it's just not something we ever work on at home. 

He's always been such a gross motor kid (running, bicycling, swimming, climbing, etc)  but other than soccer we never just play with a ball. We have just stopped gymnastics and plan to do tennis, swimming, and soccer in the fall so hopefully he will continue to improve his hand-eye coordination skills, since it's definitely not something that comes naturally to him.

Challenges: Sleep is still my biggest joy-robber. He is just never tired anymore. He is restless at bedtime and takes hours to fall asleep but then is up at the crack of dawn. And forget naps. They don't even happen once in a blue moon anymore. We've both been sick this week but he still just won't nap. It's hard when as a mom, you need more sleep than your 4 year old. And he probably needs more sleep than he's getting, but how to get him there remains a mystery. Lately what's been working is to put him to bed at 7, let him read by himself 15-20 minutes and then I come in give him a snuggle, prayer and lullabye and then turn lights out for the night. It's working a bit better but I'm sure like most things with Forest, it'll stop working after a few weeks. 

I struggle with patience. A lot. Forest is truly a great kid with a sweet and sensitive heart. But he tests boundaries constantly and his energy level is seriously obnoxious. . I'm sure single-momming it half the time doesn't help. Things go more smoothly when I have Jonathan to help reinforce things.  But I see some kids who are unflinchingly obedient and it makes me a little bitter sometimes.

He's simply not a born people-pleaser, which is fine, but means we have our work cut out for us. He's a total sweetheart and doesn't do things maliciously or defiantly, he just really wants to do what he wants to do, and usually judges the consequences to be worth the misbehavior. 

He's grown up a lot over the last few months, and I definitely feel like we are on an upswing! He's starting to have a better attitude, be more compliant and make better choices and yet still has his wild and fun spirit in tact. 

This one keeps us on our toes, but there is never a dull moment and he is amazing at entertaining himself. He loves animals and all things science, loves his friends and is always ready to have a good time, preferably by running around and being super silly. He's a total class clown, a stickler for rules (other than mine ;), and a major homebody. We love him so and squeeze him tight every single day. What a blessing!

Snail Tales

Forest attended a science camp at our church this year and about 2 weeks before camp they sent out an email saying that children with small pets (particularly frogs, lizards, and snails) were encouraged to bring them for show and tell.  I’ve mentioned here before, and those of you who know Forest know that he struggles with extreme shyness bordering on selective mutism. Recently he’s made enormous strides and has even started initiating conversations with strangers so I thought rounding up some snails to bring to camp might be a good icebreaker for him to get some conversations started with his teachers and classmates. 

The 4^thof July was super stormy here and rainy days make for excellent snail-hunting weather.

 

Forest got a little distracted while snail hunting....

We ended up with 4 pet snails (all named Gekko, because PJ Masks is life and who can tell one garden snail from another?), and have learned all sorts of fun things by observing them for a few weeks. 

1) Snails like to cuddle. We got 3 from the same plant and 1 rando guy and the 3 from the same plant are always huddled together. 

2) They sleep most of the day but seem most active in the early mornings and around bedtime. 

3) We’ve tried various foods (Blueberries, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, and strawberries) and cucumbers are by far their favorite dish, but they also enjoy strawberries and spinach. 

4) Snails build their own shells so they need lots of calcium rich nutrients in their soil. We got coconut bark soil and also put an egg shell in their terrarium. 

I’m not sure how the actual 'Show & Tell'  went but Forest said he told his teachers all about his snails. In the hallway before camp started, he was chatting up all the kids about his pet snails and he and a frog-owner were comparing their pets and how they went about acquiring them (Forest told him we almost had a pet baby frog but he kept hopping out of our hands and also we didn’t want to have to feed him bugs). 

 It was really amazing to watch him be so comfortable being the center of attention and had me wondering if our little shy guy is actually turning into a bit of an extrovert (*gasp*). Well, that might be stretch, but we love our introverted guy and all we want is for him to navigate social situations with confidence and without anxiety and I think he’s really turned a corner lately. Praise God! 

There is a praise song called ‘Do it Again’ by Elevation Worship that I’ve been listening to on repeat lately. It mostly just talks about how God is capable of miracles (even if they are on His timeline), and if you would have told me a year ago Forest would be thriving socially, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. But through prayer God has given us peace and reassurance in our most anxious moments. Seriously, as soon as I made an appointment with F’s pediatrician to get a referral for an evaluation, I picked F up from school that day and his teacher said ‘Forest spoke in circle time for the first time ever today!’. Later that week he spoke in BSF class for the first time and the next week his teacher said he sang the loudest of all the kids during music time. 

We still have hiccups for sure, but still, he is lightyears beyond where he was even 6 months ago so I’m hopeful (and prayerful) we will be able to tackle some of the remaining hurdles during his Pre-K year before he gets to Kindergarten.   “I’ve seen you move the mountains and I believe I’ll see you do it again. You made a way when there was no way, and I believe I’ll see you do it again.” 

As for the snails, we will be releasing them back into the wild soon, but they love this certain plant in our yard so I have no doubts we will be visiting Gekko, Gekko, Gekko and Gekko there frequently. 

Book Recs: Emergent/Beginning/Transitional Reader Edition

Forest is pretty darn close to fluently reading. His phonics skills are coming along and have catapulted him into literacy. I'm pretty proud of him but I can't take much credit. I have no idea how to teach a preschooler how to read and have just followed his lead mostly. Sometimes I'm still stunned when I see him come across a word like 'nocturnal' or 'allergic' and not even stumble in the sentence. It's like magic. I thought a good idea for a blog post would be to mention our favorite Early Readers that got us to this point, with the caveat that Forest did not follow the normal order for learning to read. 

He's 90% self-taught via a more 'whole language' versus 'phonics' approach. I've tried to fill in the phonics gaps with slightly more formal instruction. Research will show time and time again that phonics is the better method but when your 3 year old is teaching themselves, whatcha gonna do? Teaching him to read kind of feels like jumping onto a moving train because he's learning at such a fast pace. By the time I research what to teach next, he's already moved beyond that. I promise I'm not bragging nor do I think he's exceptional in any way. It's just my psychologist side is truly fascinated by how we learn such a complicated skill. I felt the same way when he was a toddler learning to talk. Exciting times!

The first books Forest read were BOB books, level 1. These are simple phonics based readers with a short sentence per page. There is a bit of a storyline but nothing too interesting. 

Then we moved on to 'I Can Read' Readers at the 'My First Shared Reading' level. Our favorite were definitely the Biscuit series and we also got a little Biscuit phonics set to go hand in hand with these. 

One criticism of these readers is that they are based on a whole language approach and so the lower levels are not that great for truly beginning readers who need a phonics foundation. We found the Biscuit books to be less offensive in this than the major character lines. We have a Pete the Cat book at this same level that is actually considered to be at the 1st-2nd grade reading level. So yea, that would be a little discouraging for an emerging reader! 

The 'Now I'm Reading' phonics readers are also a great tool in building on phonics skills. 
 
I found these a little late in the game but it actually worked out. We went straight to level 2/3 and started to close some knowledge gaps in terms of long vowel sounds and letter blends. 



The Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems were the first 'non-reader' books that Forest read. 

 
These are seriously great. Such fun to read. Simple, clever, and silly (i.e. perfect for preschoolers). We Are in a Book is the best! 

National Geographic Kids, Level 1 Co-readers. 
  
I include these because they were pivotal in getting Forest excited about reading, which is probably the biggest piece of the puzzle. He's a smart kid, but definitely a perfectionist so getting him to challenge himself is a struggle. Asking him to read a full book on his own cold turkey was just was too intimidating. With these books they have a page for a parent to read and then a page for them. He loved the taking turns format of these books and I think it helped to take some pressure off that he wasn't expected to read the whole book himself. He's since moved on to reading level 2 of these (again, says level 2 but is actually rated 3rd grade reading level) and is super proud of himself. He definitely loves science and non-fiction books so these have been a big helper in getting him excited to learn more and push himself. He really wants to read 'Robots' which is a level 3 so he's been practicing to get to that level. 

The Fire Cat. Level 1 'I Can Read' reader . 
 
This one is such a confidence builder! The text is beginner level but the paragraphs are lengthy and the story is actually broken into 3 chapters. Forest feels so accomplished after reading this 'chapter book' all by himself. 

Berenstain Bears- Cat in the Hat 'I Can Read it All By Myself' series. 
 
These classic, old school originals are hilariously silly. Forest actually peed his pants the first time he read The Bike Lesson because he was laughing so hard. 

True story. 

Lots of rhyming, phonics, repetition, and slapstick comedy make these a super fun read. We own The Bike Lesson and The Honey Hunt and they are two of F's favorite books in our entire library. 

The Cat in the Hat 'I Can Read it All By Myself' series also contains popular favorites such as 'Go Dog Go', 'Are you My Mother?' and  'The Cat in the Hat (duh!)', but Forest has heard those titles so many times, it can be hard to tell if he's reading them or has them memorized. It's probably a combo! 

Three Tales of My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. 
 
Forest is not *quite* reading Chapter books on his own. I think that's the final step in fluency. BUT if your preschooler loves books, these are great for reading aloud or shared reading. We've read a few other chapter books with Forest, but none have captured his heart and imagination like this trilogy. 

Honestly, I think the most important factor in raising readers is captivating them and creating warm memories of curling up with a book. 

My Mom asked me the other day what I remember most about my Grandma Fern. It wasn't her sugar cookies or Mississippi mud ice cream. I still have vivid memories of curling up in her lap on her recliner, resting my head on her chest and reading together. It was a magical time that sparked a lifelong love affair. I still give her credit anytime anyone asks me where my love of reading comes from, and I just hope I can pass that spark along to my son.