Life with a Kindergartener

Life with a Kindergartener

My daughter Joelle is five.  She still loves to spend hours playing with her baby dolls.  Her favorite thing to play is being a doctor.  To her delight, her brother Jaren is usually happy to be her patient.  She loves to be creative, but she is also a perfectionist.  I see myself in her a lot as she gets older.

Something I have learned about my daughter is that she takes her time.  When doing any project, she takes plenty of time to do it (often more time than I expect).  I think this comes from her perfectionism.  She will take her time to make sure she does it just right.  And, if I try to rush her she gets upset.  She also wants to do it according to her own standard, not mine.  Even if I say something she has done looks wonderful, she may still hate it because it did not turn out as perfectly as she wanted it.  I suspect I was a lot like her as a child.  And, I'm still a lot like this.

This last summer Joelle learned to tie her shoes in one day while we were out camping.  She was simply motivated to learn because she had a new pair of Hello Kitty sneakers and she wanted to be able to tie them herself.  I was amazed by how quickly she learned that.  But, it was a perfect illustration to me of the fact that she will learn on her own time-table, and she will learn a skill quickly when she is ready to. 


Review of Richard Scarry's Big Busy Sticker and Activity Book

My girl is not a fan of worksheets.  I'm always looking for unique ways to teach her.  We do still do some worksheets, but I also try to have other options available to use regularly.  Awhile back I discovered the Big Busy Sticker book by Richard Scarry.  Since we love the story books, I thought the sticker book would be a great "workbook in disguise" to have.  It has been well-loved by my daughter!

The book includes plenty of different types of activities such as mazes, matching games, finding what is missing, pattern games, counting games, and word games.  Most pages involve stickers, so my daughter sees it as a very fun activity.  There are a few pages with empty scenes to be filled in with stickers.

My daughter will normally do this book for half an hour to an hour.  I started out having her go through the pages in order, but I have become more relaxed about it.  She loves to pick out a set of stickers and then do the page that they go with.  She is practicing many skills with this book, and she is having fun!

We have probably had this book for a year, and there is still plenty left to do in it.  I love this book because it is something Joelle can do mostly independently.  She is learning a lot from it and it is fun for her!