Sayer loves worksheets

At gymnastics one day a few weeks ago Sayer watched a couple other girls doing worksheets. She kept begging for a turn. I knew I had a few booklets at home that I've picked up here and there - mostly from the donations at the library. So I copied a few and gave them to her. She was thrilled to be doing her 'homework.' :)

I have been doing a few more of them with her since then. Bought a few more booklets (because a lot of the time the ones I could get from the library were for the wrong age group yet ... ) and made a few more copies. Yesterday and today both I think she did a dozen worksheets. And asked for more!

I have a variety of books by a variety of publishers - and in a variety of grade levels. I've been giving her worksheets from preschool, kindergarten and first grade books. I read the instructions and help if she asks or if she stumbles when sounding out the words, but she's doing them :) We have lots of dot-to-dot, pattern recognition, size comparisons, and a bit of beginning addition and subtraction, and then a lot lot lot of phonics, word families, beginning sounds, ending sounds, long and short vowels, sentence structure, story comprehension (haven't given her any of those yet - just made copies tonight) ... and lots more that are for penmanship - learning to write her letters and numbers clearly and neatly, and to hold the pencil properly. She already knows how to construct all the uppercase and 85% of the lowercase letters, but they're all different sizes and they sprawl all across the page. And she does not hold the pencil well at all. When I do get it in her hand properly she cocks her hand around at an awkward angle and then her strokes on the paper are so light it's hard to see them.

I've kinda decided as we go through the worksheets at the various grade levels that she knows 80% of the preschool material already and is at the right level for the other 20%, she knows 50% of the kindergarten material and is at the right level to be learning the other 50%, and she knows 20% of the first grade material and she'll be at the right level to pick up the other 80% in a few months. But I've been making copies of the worksheets for things she already knows anyway, both because it can't hurt to reinforce the knowledge, and because she needs the pencil time to practice her hold and her writing skills.

So anyway, today I made about 200 double sided copies of worksheets. One at a time. Blah. But I had to get ahead of her - and I was making a bunch to put in a binder to take with us for our big trip. I'm starting to pack ...

Anyway. I'm impressed with what she knows and how easily (and willingly!!) she flies through most of these. So I thought I'd brag just a little :)