Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Verbally, Heidi is on a 3.5-year-old level

Heidi has just started in the Parents As Teachers (PAT) program. A teacher comes to the house once a month and does acitivities, songs, and reads books with the kids in this program. Last month, the teacher mainly just came to introduce herself and tell me about the program. It is totally free. It is funded by the government to help prepare children for school.

The teacher who came today gave Heidi an assessement to find out where she was verbally and with motor skills. She tested at a 3.5-year-old level in her verbal skills & was just on her age level with her motor skills. She is only 21-months-old (going on 22 mo.) right now, so I think she did pretty well.

When the lady was asking her to name some pictures, she said that the bird was an eagle. The teacher said that Heidi is only the second child she has seen to call it an eagle. Heidi has really been into Pocahontas (and Sleeping Beauty) lately, and there is an eagle in the sky in the movie. Heidi also asks me to draw an eagle for her Every Single Time we sit down to color, which is maybe a few times a week. I guess she has a thing for eagles right now.

When the lady asked her to throw a ball, she kind of throws from the side. We are going to start practicing throwing overhanded.

We are also going to practice hopping over things. She kind of hops unevenly (with one foot jumping off of the ground before the other). She has jumped the right way, but usually does it one foot before the other. So we are also going to work on that.

In the bathtub tonight, Heidi showed me that she knows the letter "E" now too. So we can add that to the list of letters that she now knows really well. She likes to play with her foam alphabet letters in the bathtub. She likes to pick them up and ask me what they are ("Was dis?"), and after I tell her, she sometimes repeats me... and then sticks her letters on the wall. She had learned the letter "E" a while back, but I think she forgot what it was called for a while. She also knows "M" too. I am not sure if I put that on the list yet or not.

Heidi also went pee pee on the potty today! YAY! She told me she had to go potty, so we went back to the bathroom and she went.

Tonight before I put her to bed, she told me she wanted to wear "pink panties." I had bought some panties at Wal-Mart a while back. I told her that she had to be a big girl and use the potty all of the time if she wanted to wear them. So we are going to wait a little while before we put them on her.

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