These days she really discovered drawing. We have stacks of pictures lying around. :-) She often draws different faces showing moods (crying, smiling, shouting, anger), or horses (lying down, running, eating, with a rider on top, with a foal in the belly). Often she also draws bits of nature - like a tree with a squirrel, dandelion and other flowers, a bird and a butterfly flying past and sun shining or big rainclouds.
She puts great detail into her drawings, which amazes me at times. She rarely colors in what she drew, but sometimes she writes a word or two on the top of the page, or she uses diffrently colored pens for drawing. Often there are whole stories invented around the drawing, or - she draws pictures that accompany a story she has already made up,
e.g. first picture shows a horse with a foal in the belly. She adds some red for blood - the foal is going to be born. The next picture shows the vet with his case, maybe his car with which he arrives.
On the next picture the foal is there, already standing up, surrounded by straw in the stable.
On the last picture there are some children who have open mouths in amazement and are happy about the newborn foal.
Apart from drawing she copies words here and there and also enjoys simple tracing-pages. First she traces the words and then she tries to read them.
She practices reading with flash-cards. Simple words she can already figure out by herself, such as 'Eis, Auto, Sonne, Mond, Maus' etc. She is not at her natural reading-age, yet, I believe, as she is still having a struggle at times to put the letters together.
Nevermind. She likes practicing and it is not important to hasten it.
On the other hand she loves maths! Numbers, working out problems, adding and substracting, simple times. She practices those things daily with joy. Either in writing oder in her head (whilst we are in the car, train or on a walk). It seems to be more easy for her to work with numbers than with letters.
Her English is unfortunately not progressing. Her dad was here recently and she enjoyed then to listen to and speak English and I was surprised that she managed quite well.
But she can't be bothered to do that with me, as I am German. Her Dad doesn't understand much German, and therefore she had the motivation to make herself understood in his language. :-)
Music is pursued in learning/singing autumn-songs and making noise with purcussion-instruments and the harmonica. Also Ayla/the kids really like listening to classical music. Ayla likes inventing stories that are accompanied by the music. Different music suits different scenes.
I am currently thinking about buying an accordeon and organizing proper tuition. Accordeon is a really nice instrument and relatively easy to learn (like piano). A small accordeon can also be transported anywhere (unlike a piano) and is great for playing music together (me guitar or violin, her accordeon, e.g.)
P.E.: Ayla has picked up horse-riding again. She only had one lesson so far, but she was enjoying it a lot, and was much more confident on horse-back than last year. I enroled her properly this time, so that there is more reason to go regularly and be disciplined about it. ;-)
In addition, Ayla has also started to take part in an acting group. She loves going there. The other kids are her age and older and seem to be very nice. The teacher is a sweet lady that used to be acting professionally. The group is also cost-free, but we have to help making the costumes when it comes to acting on stage. So far the kids are practicing pantomimes.
Literature: We are currently reading the first book of the 'Pucki' - Series. It is quite a sweet book and Ayla is surprised at how strict children used to be raised in the past (just after the war, I think) and that it was normal if they got spanked as punishment in those days.
Also, everything was much safer, as there were less cars, and Ayla envies the girl for being able to ride on a carriage to town.
We noticed that children in those days were much more 'innocent' than today (e.g. she didn't know where babies came from). We are nearly finished now and I am thinking of moving to the second book afterwards (Pucki enters school), which might be interesting as well.
In addition to that I read bible-stories to the children. Ayla loves those stories very much, and we also try to interpret them after reading and try to find a meaning in it that can be applied to everyday life.
Things of interst:
- Horses
- Dogs
- trains (Jona)
- Dinosaurs
- Playmobil
- audio-plays
- nature-walks/discovering autumn
- wild animals (deer, squirrels,...)
- watching Snoopy, Thomas Tank Engine, ...
- colouring, cutting, pasting
- bike-riding
- cooking
