Jackson is now four and a half years old. I thought I should document where he his at in life. I’ve been impressed by how much has has been learning recently. Truth be told, he’s ready for kindergarten, but blast his September birthday, he still has a year and a half until real school. He’s signed up for preschool next fall though.
Reading—I’m very happy with where Jackson is at with reading now. I’ve tried to work with him and he’d learned a lot, but it wasn’t until the last month that he’s shown lots of interest in learning to read and no big surprise, he’s gotten lots better in the past month. He has lots of sight words memorized and can sound most short words out. His biggest obstacle with his reading is that he can be lazy and doesn’t want to do the work to sound a word out. Also, he does a lot of guessing what he thinks the word should be. Now he wants to find books at the library that he can read by himself. I am grateful to my sister in law for a nice collection of beginning reading books she gave us. They have been great. This is a longer video, but it shows where he is at with reading. This is a book he’s never seen before.
Math—Jackson is really into addition and subtraction. All day long he makes up math problems to ask me. Sometimes they are easier and he knows the answer “what’s 2 + 3?”. Other times they are larger numbers that he doesn’t know the answer “what’s 15 + 11?”. Sometimes they are nonsensical like, “what’s 1 plus you?” The other day, we were talking about math and Colin and I thought we would see if he could do some algebra. We asked him, if f + 1 = 2, what is f? He said “fwon” like he was trying to combine one and f into one word. Math seems to come very easy to him and I’m convinced he’s going to be an engineer like his Daddy and Grandpa.
Legos—Jackson loves legos now. His Aunt Mandy got him a set that can make a few different airplanes and a boat. He can work on those for hours at a time. Usually he gets half way through one of the vehicles and decides he wants to make the other thing. Pretty proud of him that he can follow directions for something for 7-12 year olds and he’s 4.5. Of course, he’s gotten lots of practice on each one. Again, future engineer. The other day he said a prayer asking for help to find the yellow Lego piece he couldn’t find.
Physically—Jackson has always been very safety-conscious and that’s made him pretty scared of different activities. I know he’ll be pretty old by the time he learns how to ride a bike without training wheels because he has a pretty intense fear of falling. He’s made great progress on his bike with training wheels this spring. In the past he’s hated riding across people’s driveways because they slant and he’s scared he’ll fall. He’s gotten over that quite a bit and goes very fast on his bike. Jackson has never enjoyed swings, even as a baby. I’ve been trying to get him to sit on a swing for a very long time. I’ve said things like “you’ve got to practice swinging so you’ll be ready for kindergarten.” He’s usually flatly resisted. Then in the past month, he’s decided he wanted to get on, but he didn’t want me to push him. I was very surprised the 2nd or 3rd time sitting in the swing that he started to pump his legs and swing himself. He just needs to learn how to get up in swings that are too high all by himself and he’ll be ready for kindergarten.
Music—Jackson hasn’t shown any obvious natural music talent. He doesn’t carry a tune all that well. Usually when he sings, he starts to feel silly and goes into a silly sounding monster voice. I’m worried he sings like that at primary all the time. I’ve given him a couple of piano lessons and he’s been somewhat interested, but not, what’s the word?, cooperative. Today, I gave him a lesson, probably his 3rd ever, and I was amazed as he was reading music and playing the piano. Don’t read into this that he’s amazing on the piano, I was just excited I could get him to play anything. I feel like everyone needs to at least be able to read music, even if he doesn’t go on to play any instruments. I am salivating over the idea of how much money we can save if I can successfully give my kids music lessons.
Things we need to work on—Jackson still isn’t night time potty trained. He’s got some pretty strong genetics working against him as far as night time bladder control goes. He weighs 49 lbs and pull-ups only go to 50 lbs so we may have to do something other than pull ups in the very soon future. For everyone’s sanity, I haven’t battled this at all because I’m pretty sure his bladder won’t be mature enough until his quite a bit older. School wise, Jackson needs to work on writing his letters and numbers. Specifically, lower case letters and writing smaller and writing letters in the correct order (left to write and not all over the page). Emotionally, we need to work on trusting mommy a little bit more and not going straight to crying when something doesn’t work out or we think we aren’t going to get our way. We need to work on being more compassionate and generous. Jackson is usually kind to his sister, but there’s always room for improvement. We, like always, need to work on conquering our fear of loud noises.
LOVES—Jackson likes many things, but the things he loves most: playing xbox, legos, wrestling with daddy, mac and cheese, chocolate, curious george, daniel tiger’s neighborhood, reading books before bed with mommy, messing with Annie.
Caught Jackson putting ear plugs in mickey’s ears. Maybe mickey is scared of loud noises too.
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