Teacher Appreciation Day

This past Friday was Teacher Appreciation Day so Ella made this letter for Mrs. Dooley to go with the gift we gave her. The letter was SO sweet!

Translation: "Mrs Dooley, I love you in all different ways. You are perfect. You are very sweet. Love, Ella"

Mother's Day Picture

Ella made me this awesome picture for Mother's Day after school today.  It's so sweet and I love the round belly she drew in the middle of my shirt!

Ella's book about San Antonio

Ella made a book about our trip to San Antonio, and her little pictures are just so cute! 

I love how her little mind works and seeing her memories.

All of us caught out in the pouring rain 

The three of us on a boat on the river - this one is a little sad because due to the rain we did not get to go on the boat ride we had planned...definitely a must-do for the next time :) 

On her favorite ride at Sea World, the big water flume ride 

Eating dinner at a patio restaurant overlooking the river one night 

Our hotel 

The Alamo 

The man dressed up like a monster outside the Ripley's Haunted Adventure - Ella was fascinated by him! 

The three of us driving to Austin 

Bobby and Vanessa's house, a picture of their dog Rocky and Alessandra in her crib 

Shamu show at Sea World 

Breakfast at the hotel - note the chef's hat on Ella's head! 

Dinner at a restaurant 

Dinosaurs at Dino Quest 

Happy Thanks Mothers Day

It's almost 10pm, Ella should be asleep. We went out to dinner and got ice cream after so I'm sure that explains why she's still awake.

A few minutes ago, she came out of her bedroom with her notebook, sat down next to me on the couch and told me she has something very beautiful to show me. I asked her what it is and she proudly opens up to this picture that she made -

Her description of the picture - "It's a special picture of you, me and daddy, and the rainbow we saw yesterday. And an American flag for United States of America! I don't know if it was fireworks day. And it says 'to mommy - Happy Thanks Mothers Day'....sheesh, hard to shoo her back to bed after such a sweet little Thanks Mothers Day wish!!

Solar System

A beautiful solar system drawn by Ella!

Writings and Drawings

Ella makes a lot of wonderful masterpieces between her pictures, drawings, writing, crafts, projects at school, etc...I keep a lot of them, but there is just no way to keep them all, so I take pictures of the ones that I would like to have a record of, but that aren't quite in the "keeper" category -- much easier to save a file than all that paper to add to my many memorabilia boxes :).

I love to see the progression of her learning in how she writes, draws, paints, and does projects - here are some neat ones from the last few months -

House with windows and door and a person inside

Her drawings of  people have distinguishable features now and there are lots of different parts to her scenes - sky at the top, ground at the bottom, people in the middle, etc.

Rainbows!

She loves using stencils, here's a big ladybug she stenciled and colored in.

Her "blooming garden"

Writing her numbers

Clock worksheet, beginning to learn about the basics of telling time


Another math worksheet... she is starting to understand addition, I was very proud of this one :)

This one is neat because the instructions said to draw 3 worms, and although she didn't go with 3 worms up top, drew the 3 pencils on the bottom :)

Many "Ella"'s - she's an expert on this one!

Working on her letters  - when she puts her mind to it, she can write almost every letter in the alphabet

Writing some of her sight words and practicing those pesky "K"s, which are one of her trickiest letters

Her class had a stuffed teddy bear named Theo, and every night a different child gets to bring him home for a "sleepover" and then answer some questions about their evening together. Ella loved her night with Theo and got such a big kick of documenting their adventure.

To translate her answers below, for the question "After school, Theo and I"...Ella's answer: fed him, played with him

"For dinner we ate"...Ella's answer: salad, ravioli, chicken

Easter painting...I love this one, a true keeper!!

Learning to Write and Draw

I am really fascinated by how Ella learns new things, and one of the most interesting so far has been the process of her learning to write and draw.

Thank goodness for her preschool, because even though I've had 31 years to work on my writing and alphabet knowledge, I would not have the slightest idea of how to actually teach it to Ella myself. But I love following along with what they're teaching and seeing how and what helps her to learn.

When Ella first started to write, the first step seemed to be for her to realize that letters were individual characters and she'd practice by writing many characters all over her pages. This one is from April, it was one of the first times where I could really see her trying to write.



They were all basically different kinds of circles and squiggles. Then she was able to recognize and create the differences between several of them, and would work on them over and over. In these she wrote capital As, Ws, Hs, Is, Os and Ds.





This is one of the first times of writing her first name!


Learning to use proper caps for her first name






First and last - this is from about a month ago, I am amazed how far she has come with it!



She's now also working on writing other people's names and likes asking me how to spell words and she'll try to write them. The other day she was asking me what projects we had to do and she made her own 'list', it was pretty neat.

Along the same lines as her writing, I have enjoyed seeing her progression of drawings. Just in the last few months, her drawings have started to take on shapes other than scribbles and lines, and 'portraits' have become her new specialty!





This one she was really proud of because she used the legs to spell her name


I love this one, it's the 2 of us, you can read "mommy" if you look closely :)


And this is her first math worksheet, from just a few weeks ago, she had to count the number of animals in each picture and choose the correct number.


I am one proud Mommy!!