Glad

I'm glad that Freddie is finally learning and understanding his letters and sounds. I'm glad that he is comprehending that numbers equal amounts of things and that he is on the verge of being able to count to 10 without forgetting 7! This is amazing progress because six months ago he only knew 4 or 5 letters and maybe one sound that was just memory rather than actually understanding how letters and sounds work. Oh that was a hard one. He could not consistently count to 5 and was so easily frustrated. Now he can happily sit down for lesson time and is proud of himself when he gets it right. Freddie is even able to recognize some words now, thank you Dr. Seuss!

Our biggest struggle is definitely going to be handwriting. We are working from a book by Kumon that seems pretty similar to the Handwriting Without Tears program. It starts with horizontal and vertical lines, then diagonal, then curves and circles. Instead of working on the letters in order, it categorizes them by the types of lines and the difficulty. The problem here though is that Freddie is left handed and I'm not. Thankfully, my mother-in-law is left handed and can give me some tricks on helping him.

The book itself though is written for a right handed person, and I am not of the mindset that left handed folks should learn to write just like everyone else. I mean, if its true that his preferred writing hand is actually linked to the areas of his brain that he's tapped into, why would I want to fight it? So, when the book says to draw an "A" by starting at #1 (located at the top point) and go to the stop sign (located at the end of the first leg) by moving your hand from the top of the A to the bottom...Freddie would naturally want to move his hand from the bottom of the second leg, move to the top, then down to create the first leg, then from right to left to cross them. Unfortunately, he also wants to follow the book but he physically has such a hard time and it is far from smooth. I know it's a process, but maybe there are left handed handwriting books out there somewhere. Maybe he'll embrace his different style and stop insisting on following the numbers! I'm still glad though, glad that he is sweet, glad that he told me today while trying to draw a circle, "I think I'm having some trouble here." I'm glad that he loves Toy Story and has agreed excitedly to let me make his and Addie's Halloween costumes so they can be Woody and Jessie, and glad that he is wearing a pirate hat right now. I'm glad that Addie insists every color is pink and does everything her big brother teaches her. I'm just glad, pleased, grateful, and oh just wait for it....content! Thank you, Jesus, and help me continue in contentment today and tomorrow!