Cagalli's Corner

My sister has been telling me to set a study time for Kalli everyday cause she's worried that Kalli's not so "amazingly advance" anymore, hahaha. I'm not sure if I should do it though. She might start getting pressured and start hating the word (and concept of) "study". What I've been doing is teaching her things while playing. For example, I remember when I taught her the letters when she was around 14/15 months old. She has these flash cards and at first I tried teaching her by showing her the cards and making her say the letters. She didn't like it though. I noticed she liked stepping on the cards and pretending they were her shoes. What I did was, instead of asking her to say the letters, I put the cards (4 at a time) on the bed and asked her to step on letter . It worked. And she enjoyed it too :)

Anyway, here are some of the things she knows:

• She knows how to count 1-10. She can sometimes count up to 19 too, except she confuses 11 and 7. She goes 1, 2, .... 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 8, 9, 10, 11, 8, 9, 10, ... hahaha. You have to help her with the 12, then she's good again :)
• She recognizes most of the capital letters
  
• She knows how to spell KALLI
  
• She knows the colors red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange, gray, brown, black, and white. She even knows dark and light (e.g. light blue vs dark blue)
• She knows the shapes circle, oval, triangle, square, heart, star, and cross. She keeps forgetting rectangle though.
  
• She knows a LOT of nursery rhymes
  
• She can converse (in English) quite fluently. She rarely has trouble communicating what she wants.
• She knows most of the Disney songs and characters
  
• She can count 1-6 in Spanish
  
• She knows how to use the plural form of words (adding s or es), use of 'ing', and some past and present tense words
• She knows what the bats use to see in the dark (it's echolocation, hahaha)

I'm trying to teach her to recognize numbers and small letters now. I think she knows 1, 2, and 4. Mamu wants her to learn how to spell 3 letter words like 'cat' and 'dog' but I believe it's more important to recognize the letters first. Tita LA wants her to learn to add and subtract (by counting). That'll probably be easier since she can count objects now.

Here are some adorable baby things she does:

• She can't pronounce R. It always sounds like Y (e.g. water sounds like 'wotoy')
• We have a routine before going to sleep. Play 1 toy, read 1 book, close the lights, drink milk, drink water, then sleep. Usually she sleeps on her own. There are a few times however when she would ask me to carry her like a baby and sing "Rock-a-by-baby". It's so funny and adorable, specially since she's so big now.
• When she hides, she only covers her eyes.
• She calls sweeping "brooming".
• She pronounces following "followling"

There are a lot more, but I think these are enough for now. Kalli's here by my side now and she wants me to play LEGO with her. I'm trying to teach her to play on her own but she's resisting it. I hope she learns it soon.

Gotta go!