Pretend & Singing

Fairy Princess

Since D and I both feel Avery should be watching less TV, we've been trying to reduce her time in front of the screen while down here. There's no strict limit, but we said no to most requests to watch TV. This means we have to find ways to fill her time other than the oh-so-easy TV. D bought a few books for Avery in the LA airport during our layover. One of them is about a little girl playing dress up. Avery loves this book and knows the whole thing almost by heart. She misses a few words, but for the most part, can "read" the whole book to herself.

One of the characters the girl dresses up as is a fairy princess. This morning, we used the cover of a huge coloring book I brought for her and made her a fairy princess hat. She played with this for quite some time. Then she requested a helmet so she could ride her "tricycle" (aka a box of wipes). It cracks me up that she won't ride her "tricycle" without her "helmet." That insistence has got to have come from the G household since we forgot to even get a helmet when we bought her tricycle (a situation which has been rectified). 


States & ABCs

I've been singing the 50 states song with Avery and, as a result, she can now say the states in alphabetical order up to Indiana (that's Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana). Sometimes Connecticut is very clear, sometimes it's just gibberish followed with a loud "CUT!" Truth be told, I didn't think she was absorbing it, but then one day she went through all the A's and C's. She knows portions of the other states, but not as reliably as the first 14 states. I did get it on video this morning, though it wasn't her best rendition. I'll keep discreetly videoing her when she starts singing them to see if I can get a good chunk.

Her ability to sing the ABCs has been around for a while, but they're still not 100%. Despite the fact she can recognize the letter J (and all other letters for that matter - she's about 90% on doing it correctly each time), she almost always leaves it out when singing the alphabet. And the LMNO part is very run together, probably because I tend to say it faster when we sing the song. I'm trying to slow down so she can hear them enunciated, but that hasn't made much difference yet.

This morning she and I were "doing letters" as she calls it. That's where we sing the alphabet and then she or I pick a letter and we (and by we and I mean me) name all the words we can that start with that letter. This is mostly a game we play on dog walks to keep her happy in the back pack. Anyway, today, Avery said, "Do letter F!" I said OK and then made the sound that words that start with the letter F sound like. I asked her if she could think of a word that makes that sound. She thought about it and then said, "foot!" That was pretty darn cool.