Raising a Reader!

If you believe that teaching your child to read and helping your child develop proficient reading skills is the key to success in life, and if you wish to help your children develop to their fullest potential... then your must read this message carefully. 

READ! READ! READ! READ! The best thing that you could do for your child is read to them daily. Teaching your child to love to read will payoff in the long run. As a Reading Coach, my job is to provide teacher with support and professionally development in literacy. My job is to grow teachers professionally. However, the biggest lesson I've learned about literacy was when I had my daughter. I knew that reading to my child was important. To my surprise I began to see the payoff earlier than I could have ever imagined. At one years old, Ari knew concept of prints. She understood that a reader read a book left to right, she could identify the front & back cover, where the authors name could be found and that the book had words and that readers read with intonation. At two, she began retelling her favorite books and even began to pretend as though she was reading the book. Now at 2 1/2 she already can recognize 17 letters and 5 letter sounds and recognizes all of the letters in her name. Let me remind you that she is 2! The craziest part is that I did not do any magical program, or worked with her non stop (she doesn't like it when I try to teach her anything) we just simply read to her every night no matter what. Even my husband who is not a big fan of reading reads to her about 3 books a night.  So the big secret for literacy success is the exposure to books early on. 

I even began to take little Ari to the public library. The library has a section of board books and she loves to pick out books to read. She even has that system down packed, where she know exactly where to return the books and where to check them out. I love to see her excitement for books! Many people assume that she is capable of doing so much because her mom is a reading coach but in reality I do not do anything extra I promise. I just read daily and make sure that she is expose to as many books as possible. This is the best thing you can do for your kids and it's absolutely free! 

Happy Reading! 

Little Ari reading to me! 

 

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Interview with my 2 year old!

This week has been a busy one for Ari and I. On Monday, little Ari took pictures at the mall and they came out super cute. She has so much personality... which led to the idea of the next project below.

 

While reading online I came across a few super cute videos of children answering questions that their parents asked. Some parents asked the same questions year after year to document how answer vary as the little one grow up. Well, this week I got the idea to do an interview with Ari since she is talking a little bit more now. She is such a silly little girl that I just knew this video will be tons of fun to watch when she is 15 (lol).

I quickly googled free site to edit and I found My Stupeflix.com a quick and simple website that allows you to edit and make videos for free. It took me 20 minutes to develop this super cute video of Ari answering some super simple questions (Remember she is only 2!).

Enjoy!

San Antonio TX Trip

It's been a month since I've made a post. However, my new goal for this blog is to make a post at least once a week. I love to look back at my post and read all of my mommy moments. 

Now, to our wonderful San Antonio trip. The hubby has a good friend that just relocated to Texas so we decided to take a trip to visit their beautiful new home and spend some time with them. They were great hostesses and planned a number of events for the 4 days we were in town. But I must admit my favorite event was the drive in zoo. Whoever invented this was a genius! Basically, you drive around the zoo and the many animals would come up to the car and you could feed them. 

Ari loved the animals and she was not scared at all! This was a great experience and I recommend it to anyone in the area. 

Dance Camp Progress

It's been 2 weeks of dance camp and I thought I would provide an update on how little Ari is doing. I was very worried that little Ari would not participate since she tends to be shy at first but to my surprise she is doing better than I expected. Now that does not mean perfect lol! Last Wednesday she refused to do anything for the first 15 minutes but hen she warmed up and did great the rest of the time. She actually loves the technical part of the dance and is not a big fan of the silly parts. Overall she is doing great for a two year old. I love to see her try new things and learn new things!

After two weeks, I had enough pictures and photos to make a Magisto video and OMG I love it. If you have not heard of this awesome app you need to download it. It makes super adorable videos using your pictures and videos. Check out my new video Dance Your Heart Out! 

Pinterest Addict!

Pinterest is very addicting! I find my self looking through Pinterest multiple times a day. One of my new obsession is photography. I've never taken a formal course instead I've don't research and taught myself what I know so far. Looking through Pinterest allows me to learn more but also gather ideas of things I want to remake like this picture...

It's a beautiful picture! I pinned this picture when I was pregnant with little Ari and told my self that when Ari started dance I would attempt to remake this photo. That moment has finally arrived.. Ari just started dancing and after dance practice she was playing with her daddy. Her dad was tossing her in the area and immediately I remembered pinning this photo and been taking pictures. 

It's not exactly the same but it's unique to us!! 

Little Ballerina Dance Camp

Today was little Ari's first day of dance camp. Her class is Tiny Ballerinas two and three year olds. Once again I had a difficult time locating a leotard that fits because of little Ari's petite body. Finally, I purchased one on Ebay and it came in today and fit perfectly so she didn't need to wear an oversize one since the smallest Danskin comes in is 2/3 which is way to big if your daughter still wears 18 months. I am thinking that hopefully by Christmas we will reach the 2/3 sizes.

Before we headed out to class I decided to take some pictures with the super adorable book that her God Mother Stacy gave her. The super cute book explain all of the different position in ballet and also what to wear. It was an absolutely perfect gift!

The first day of Dance camp was a bit scary for Ari. Since it's summer camp the classes are way larger than the typical classes. Therefore, as we arrived over a dozen mini ballerinas and their super excited parents were in the studio. I believe this was a huge shock for Ari because she shut down and immediately wanted me to pick her up. She refused to participate or even get down for a while. Eventually, she began to feel a little comfortable and I think she began to see how much fun the other little ballerinas were having that she started participating. Then they began playing Let it Go in the studio and by then she was fully engaged. It was super cute to see how focus she was towards the end. I hope that she gets excited about dance classes and Wednesday is not so much of a shock for her. Either way, mommy had a great time dressing her up and watching my little princess take her first dance class even if for the majority she didn't participate.