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TBD is four years + three months old (though month is increasingly not a particularly significant digit).
Achievements unlocked this last month: rinsing hair by leaning head back in the bath, telling a complete invented story with beginning + middle + end, drawing a circle then coloring it in, drawing recognizable squares and triangles, monkey bars, fidget spinners, matching sounds to letters and vice versa.
Pretend play has grown ever more important, to the point that it has significantly displaced reading as TBD's preferred way of spending time with me. Typically the actors are toy cars and trucks, but for a week there it was small dinosaurs. Sometimes the fourth wall gets broken and the toys interact with the "giants" around them. Diegetic pretenders!
I've learned most of what I know about what goes on at school through pretend play.
Favorite color is now strong part of self-identity: If someone else likes dark blue, it's almost an affront. We're not sure what to make of this.
Thinking, thinking continues apace. The startling recent example was putting together a couple different explanations of where babies come from to form a surprisingly accurate summary of human reproduction, at a level of detail appropriate for a 4-year-old. There's been other examples of clever problem solving as well, none of which I wrote down and so cannot remember at the moment.
While there's been some work at learning lowercase letters, there's been more effort on letter sounds. TBD can generally name the letter that goes with a sound, and so spell out a word as someone sounds it out (assuming regular orthography). Sounding out a written word is a bit trickier, and so far TBD only sometimes manages that. Numbers up to a hundred can be read out, somewhat shakily. Writing letters remains even shakier, although the work on drawing/writing motor skills at preschool is showing.
And then there's talking, talking:
(of the Joker's mecha suit)
"Did he get that at the bad-guy store?"
(of a pretend fart)
"It smells like cranberries and milk and eyebrows and feet."
(shortly after learning about kryptonite)
"No, wait, I get to be Spider-man and you have to be Superman. Sorry, Daddy."
"On a march! And set! Go!"
(current standard phrase)
"I am the car with the bloody finger and I am 10 blocks away!"
"I have to choose all by myself, and you're not me."
"Have no fear, Halloween is here!"
Yes, we are already anticipating trick-or-treating. We still have a few pieces of candy from last year, mind. But they could run out any day!
---L.
Subject quote from "Shine," Vienna Teng.
Achievements unlocked this last month: rinsing hair by leaning head back in the bath, telling a complete invented story with beginning + middle + end, drawing a circle then coloring it in, drawing recognizable squares and triangles, monkey bars, fidget spinners, matching sounds to letters and vice versa.
Pretend play has grown ever more important, to the point that it has significantly displaced reading as TBD's preferred way of spending time with me. Typically the actors are toy cars and trucks, but for a week there it was small dinosaurs. Sometimes the fourth wall gets broken and the toys interact with the "giants" around them. Diegetic pretenders!
I've learned most of what I know about what goes on at school through pretend play.
Favorite color is now strong part of self-identity: If someone else likes dark blue, it's almost an affront. We're not sure what to make of this.
Thinking, thinking continues apace. The startling recent example was putting together a couple different explanations of where babies come from to form a surprisingly accurate summary of human reproduction, at a level of detail appropriate for a 4-year-old. There's been other examples of clever problem solving as well, none of which I wrote down and so cannot remember at the moment.
While there's been some work at learning lowercase letters, there's been more effort on letter sounds. TBD can generally name the letter that goes with a sound, and so spell out a word as someone sounds it out (assuming regular orthography). Sounding out a written word is a bit trickier, and so far TBD only sometimes manages that. Numbers up to a hundred can be read out, somewhat shakily. Writing letters remains even shakier, although the work on drawing/writing motor skills at preschool is showing.
And then there's talking, talking:
(of the Joker's mecha suit)
"Did he get that at the bad-guy store?"
(of a pretend fart)
"It smells like cranberries and milk and eyebrows and feet."
(shortly after learning about kryptonite)
"No, wait, I get to be Spider-man and you have to be Superman. Sorry, Daddy."
"On a march! And set! Go!"
(current standard phrase)
"I am the car with the bloody finger and I am 10 blocks away!"
"I have to choose all by myself, and you're not me."
"Have no fear, Halloween is here!"
Yes, we are already anticipating trick-or-treating. We still have a few pieces of candy from last year, mind. But they could run out any day!
---L.
Subject quote from "Shine," Vienna Teng.