School of Thought

The learning capacity of a pre-schooler never ceases to amaze me! Owen is a sponge for knowledge right now. I feel challenged to expose him to more information than he can absorb, reasoning that then I will have "filled him to the brim" with as much knowledge as he can hold. I will have done my job as Owen's primary teacher. However, I am realizing that no matter how much I teach him, he can always hold more and more. I guess that's job security for you! I will never work myself out of a job at The House of Halpin with curious Boys around! I have been blessed with a great window of opportunity when learning is both exciting and easy for O. It is so much fun to watch him figure things out and see his hunger for more!

Here are a few things O has learned just in the past two weeks:

He can now recognize almost all of the lower case letters of the alphabet.

He knows the sounds every letter in the alphabet makes.

He can sound out three letter words, both to read them and to spell them (and today he sounded out the word "Texas"!).

He can write about half of the letters in the alphabet.

He can spell and write the names of all the people in his family from memory.

He is fascinated with rhyming words and rhymes all day long!

Obviously, we have been working quite a bit on words and letters, if you hadn't picked up on that. I guess my focus was a little too narrow, because this is what O piped up with on the way home from church Sunday:
"Mommy, what does two 1s make?"

"Two, O. Why?"

"I wanted to know. I know that two 2s make 4 and two 3s make 6. Two 4s make 8 and two 5s make 10!"

Hmmmm. Would that be considered addition or very simple multiplication that my son has taught himself? Thus the reason I have felt challenged! It did not cross my mind to be teaching him math right now! We have mastered counting and number recognition, so I thought we were doing pretty well!

When challenged, O can work simple word problems:
If you have 4 yogurts and eat one, how many are left in the fridge?

If two puppies are playing in the yard and another one joins them, how many puppies are there?

If two fish are swimming in the water and three more jump in, how many are swimming together?

He can also do addition like 2 fingers plus 3 fingers is 5 fingers total, 5 fingers plus 2 fingers is 7 total, etc.

You blow me away, Owie! I love nothing more than to teach you things and to see your delight in learning! May God equip me to live up to the task of teaching you about Him, in addition to book learning. Spending my days with you is a blessing beyond measure.

(Now, like I've said on other posts , this could be perfectly on schedule for a just turned three year old, but it is amazing to me! I am increasingly in awe of how God created the human mind to think logically and reasonably from such a tiny age! To me, O is pure genius...as your child surely is and should be to you!!)