The Georgous

Last night as we settled in to learn a few more letters and read a few more books, I randomly asked Georgie, do you know what letter this is? She quickly tells me that is ‘O’, so I try again this time with ‘N’ then I got really excited and started pulling out the mini-books from which we have been reading the letters.

Going backwards through  M, L, K…until G she recognises nearly all the letters.

I was well impressed!

Books read:
Letters, N and O

Postman Pat and the Pink Slippers

Georgia’s first dental appointment went surprisingly well. She opened wide for the dentist to have a look in her mouth which was a bit iffy — whether she would or not.

Some preparation helped, I’m sure, in the form of the Usborne series The Book of First Experiences -Going to the Dentist which we read last night – carefully edited to leave out the bit about injections and fillings….torturous details can come later!

The few ideas that helped convince Georgia that the dentists is a ‘fun’ place.

• Has a special chair that goes up and down
• A bright spotlight that just shines on your mouth
• Just wants to check that you brush your teeth correctly

All in all, a pleasantly good experience. Even if she did sit in my lap on the dentists special chair….
She did well just opening wide and saying AAAaaa…..

PROGRESS!!!

As of April 23rd 2008, we no longer have a stair gate.
Georgia is now confident to go down and come up the stairs independently.

Monday 21st of April

St Johns on the Hill, an independent school in Chepstow.

Impressions of St. Johns on the Hill, Glouscester, England. Nursery

A very impressive, new purpose built building housing the nursery in a huge open plan ‘hall’.  The different age group settings, Butterflies (12 weeks – 12 months), Caterpillars (1-2 years), Ladybirds (2-3 years) and Busy Bees (3-4 years) were separated by knee-high latched picket fences. The nursery areas included a sensory room and a soft play room.

What I liked about it:

‘A curriculum’ – an outline of learning topics.
Although at this nursery, this seemed more academic than ‘hands-on’ experiential.

Lots of books, drawing, writing and play material at accesible heights.

Dislikes – none too major, but….

Several staff seemed to be temporary – but this was not mentioned or pointed out.
We were introduced to the staff but were not told their names; although they seemed friendly enough.
Child-staff ratio did not seem to be consistently maintained.

The children seemed content (not necessarily happy) although the 30 minutes or so we were there – the time appeared to be very structured.

Oddities
Different responses by Jan Harvey wrt to availability.

At first, told oh in september you can have any day any time you want.
And later when asked about application procedure, it became you’ll have to submit the application form and you’ll go on the waiting list and I’ll just go down it and tick them off.

When asked how long she had been at the nursery,  she fobbed of the question with a ‘Oh a very long time, 120 years!’

Impressions of St. Johns on the Racecourse, Chepstow, Wales. Nursery

The racecourse nursery had a lovely manager who ws very helpful and forthcoming with information. Even telling us which days she had available in September. The nursery itself was rather disappointing in comparison. it was small and rather old. And seemed quite messy.

Interestingly, there were very different approaches to the education – Hill emphasising formal learning with a folder of ‘curriculum’ etc while Racecourse was mainly ‘ learn through play’ no actual teaching or writing etc. I think this difference stems mainly from the fact that they are in different countries with different learning priorities!

Apart from a couple of questions wrt to funding (cross border) and time slots, we are likely to put Georgia down for Hill although i’m not too keen on the manager, i’m going on the idea that it’s her key worker or the actual nursery workers who will be more involved in her care and they all seem friendly enough.
 

In case, our readers are concerned, Georgia did NOT have to sing for her supper, and she was eating her jelly dessert at the time of this recording.

Georgia has learnt to count, perhaps more accurately it should be said, Georgia has learnt to recite numbers from One ’til Eleven; well, why stop at ten??

She does do counting, I am inclined to believe that she does understand that reciting numbers do represent assigning numbers. Just the other day, she was excited over a couple of babies who followed us in to the Cardiff Toys ‘R Us store, and she counted…

“One baby….two babies”

Finally!! We made it to the Land of the Nappy-free (in the day time at least!).
We are still navigating slowly in the nights – but that is another story.

This one begins with a day out – to Bath and then to The Mall at Cribbs.

It was a hesitant decision to not use pull-ups. We have had several short outings in ‘pretty panties’ but nothing like being out the whole day. Main concerns were – what do we do when we’re going at 70 mph down the M4 and Georgia decides she needs to wee – granted we have the travel pottee (a very useful invention) but stopping on the gravelly hard shoulder with other cars whizzing by at 100mph simply is not safe!

Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry. With a little planning and anticipation, (well it’s all about timing) once she had done a big wee at home we left straight-away to head to Bath. The travel pottee was used twice that day, but there were also other successful visits to the loos in Cribbs.

So all in all, a very successful dry day out!

In Penang, Malaysia:

Day 2 of – No nappies during the day time.

Georgia sits on a towel in her car seat – in case of accidents but so far only 1 during an extremely long journey to Sunshine Square!

As of the week starting  18 November, Georgia has started stating her demands in sentences — 3-5 word long sentences.

21st October 2007 — New word ‘pa-pah’ hockkien for full — when had had enough to eat.
Of course, I question whether Georgia really is pa-pah or whether she’s learnt to say that so that I stop poking the spoon at her mouth.
Whatever her reason — it works!