Smarty Pants

Sometimes, Ariana knocks my socks off with just how amazingly capable she is. I sometimes lose sight of this because of her inability to communicate what she knows.  Boy, does this make me feel… guilty.  Guilty for not giving her the credit and the targeted instruction that she deserves until my awareness catches up to her ability.  It also makes me feel proud.  Proud that my little girl is a beaming beacon of accomplishment, despite the hindering circumstances that are a part of her every day journey.  And it makes me hopeful.  Hopeful that this girl will continue to rise and shine, and that every year will mark countless more achievements, and that she will knock the socks off everyone she meets.

Gabe went through a stage about two years ago when he loved the “Letter Factory” DVD, and he learned all his letters and phonics from that DVD in a very short period of time.  Since Isabella has turned two and has adopted an interest in the letters and their sounds, I started rerunning this movie.  I was happy to see that Bella had learned almost all of her letters and their sounds after a few viewings of this movie, but I can’t say that I was all that surprised, seeing as how Gabe was that age when he accomplished the same feat.

With that said, I started singing the little jingle that’s from the movie that goes, “The ‘A’ says ‘aaaah’… every letter makes a sound, the ‘A’ says ‘aaaah’” and so on, throughout the entire alphabet.  Without going into too much detail, it didn’t take long for me to realize that Ari can  proudly pronounce many of phonics and probably knows most, if not all of them!  Ari can tell you what sounds the A, B, D, E, I, J, L, M, O, P, T, U, V make!  With some extra tries, she can get N and comes very close to H.  Seeing this, I have been trying to get her to say other words that include these consonant/vowel sounds, and so far, she has said “bird (bid)”, “ball”, “apple (appuh)” and “all done (ah dah)”.

If that’s not enough to make your skirt fly up, she can identify nearly every animal and almost all of her colors (sometimes a little inconsistent, but still)!  Not only that, but she has several books memorized, and has come up with some hand gestures that correspond to parts of the stories that she can anticipate prior to hearing them.  Ari has, using her augmentative communication device, started using two word phrases independently and appropriately in context, which she uses to get her needs met (i.e. “want that”, “want more”, “want drink”, “want turn”, “want read”, “want play”, “Stop!”, “Want help”).

This girl makes my world flip. :)

One more year until she goes to real, mainstream Kindergarten!