Uh-oh!

Charlie's favorite word right now, or actually the only word that he knows how to use correctly is uh-oh. Which means that he constantly creates reasons to use that word. What fun! Pour out a box of Nerds, "Uh-oh!" Pour out a bag of Teddy Grahams, "Uh-oh!" Throw your sippy cup, pappy and all your food across the room, "Uh-oh!" Tonight we had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, so he created lots of opportunities for himself to say his favorite word. Zeus was very happy...

Today he played with markers for about 3 seconds, and ended up with marker all over his face, head and hands. He walked around looking at his hands, saying his own version of, "Yuck!" Ha! Carter had a particularly rough day. It rained so hard here today, all day long. He kept wanting to go outside and play, and in hindsight, maybe I should have put his rain boots on him and told him to have fun. Anyway, I ended up letting him think it was a fun game to run up and down the stairs, which he did for 10-15 minutes or so (that's a lot of running up stairs for a 4-year-old). He declared that he likes going down the stairs but not up them.

A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. Coline said he had a completely AWESOME day. She was blown away. And a few times lately she has told me that he has been the only one in his class who paid attention during whatever she was talking about. I'm SO proud that he is doing so well at school these days. He has gotten several treats at school and then at home for listening so well, even when everyone else was not.

Mrs. Coline also told me that she bought him a reading program (just for him) because he's ready to learn to read. I'm NOT a natural teacher and struggle to do things like that with him. We are very hit or miss - maybe once a month or so? Anyway, before she told me this, we had started reading some simple books and I would read the difficult words and point to the small words (a, and, the, him, he, to, is, and so on...). He can read all those words very well, and even some character names like McQueen, Mater, Nemo, and Dory. Of course, these are all sight words and we haven't gotten too far on learning sound combinations (he knows the sound all the letters make, but put together - not so much). I was initially worried about teaching him to read early, because he still has a year and a half before kindergarten. I don't want him to be bored and get in trouble, but I recently learned that they will let him read at his own level even in kindergarten.