Ella in the Casa

Ella is a busy girl as her second year at Garden of Hope is winding down. I don’t see what she’s working on very often because the bus picks her up and not me, but I get an extra peek when I pick her up on Fridays and once a month I volunteer in the office. Ella’s working on her sewing skills – she’s close to mastering a sewing card. Once that is done, she’ll be able to start on a bookmark (with a real thread and needle!). She’s very excited. She’s been working on her counting skills with one-to-one correspondence. Still loves water work.

A couple of months ago, Ella took another step closer to being a reader/writer! Moveable alphabet! Last year, Ella mastered her sound card when she was proficient at recalling the sound each letter made in a random order. In Montessori, students use the moveable alphabet before writing. It gives them the ability to sound out words and entire sentences without the worry of also trying to correctly form each letter on paper. But, if you’re sounding out words, you’re also beginning to read those words. Ella’s been working on rhyming words like: at, cat, bat, mat,etc. She’s very proud of herself! She’s also practicing her social skills, as the alphabet set is too heavy for her to move by herself, so she has to find a friend and ask them to help her move it from the shelf to her mat. This is big time stuff. Hard to believe, by this time next year, she could be a reader!

When I work in the office, there is typically a birthday card or two that need to be completed for upcoming celebrations. The students who are writers write a compliment and sign their name while the younger ones add some decoration in the form of stickers, a stamp or a stencil and an adult writes their name next to their “flair”. There are three stamps to choose from, but they get rotated from a larger group of stamps. Most children seem to be partial to a certain medium, but some will mix it up a bit and try out new things. Ella, however, is a stamp girl. And not just any stamp – she has a favorite. In fact, she is so attached to this particular stamp when doing birthday cards, that when Ms. Debbie switched out the stamps, she couldn’t bring herself to take out Ella’s favorite stamp because of the joy it brings Ella. She gets a huge smile and just lights up when she gets to stamp that happy little sun on a card.

 

She’s also working hard in the afternoons, last week we got a surprise in her backpack! Ella is very close to writing her name unassisted! Her afternoon program doesn’t typically teach writing this young either. But, Ella has been showing a lot of interest in writing her own name on her projects, so they started helping her. A few months later, with only a little light wrist support, Ella can write her name (more legibly than her father too!).