Catherine's Desk Work

These are not action shots of the girls, but I wanted to memorialize their work someway. I am so anti-clutter that I throw out all of their worksheets and art projects nearly every day. On slow days, each girl will produce 10-15 pages of "work." On days when they are on a roll, they can easily produce 50 pages each. It just depends on their mood. No way am I saving all that. In fact, I am actually saving none of it. All of it goes in the trash.

But, I felt convicted recently to record it somehow. They actually do work hard on them and are so proud of them. They can't wait to show Daddy when he gets home. Catherine always wants to take some in to her teacher to show her. So, I decided that I would digitally "save" some of their work. For posterity.

Today I introduced Catherine to the greater than, less than, and equal signs. I don't think she has done this in school, because whenever I try to explain something to her that she already knows she stops me and tells me that she "knows it already." Catherine seemed to understand this concept fairly quickly:

I draw smily faces on her work if it is correct. It should come as no surprise that Catherine does not like simple smily faces. She adds hair and a tiara (with jewels).

Today I also gave her a bar graph worksheet. We have never done this at home, but she understood it pretty well. Interestingly, at dinner she told Robby that her class does a bar graph of the weather every morning during calendar. I had no idea. I still can't get used to having no idea what she does all day long.

Don't you love how colorful her work is? Makes me wonder if she will be a designer of some sort when she grows up.

Lately I have noticed that Catherine writes some of her letters backwards. Every quarter when we go to Brain Tumor Survivor Clinic at the hospital we meet with a nueropsychologist. I asked her about the possibility that Catherine is dyslexic. She said that it is pretty normal for kindergarteners to write letters & numbers backwards.

So, I have tried to give Catherine a lot more number writing exercises so she can practice them. Most of her letters are correct. This is a perfect worksheet for practicing writing numbers:

Again, Catherine loves to use as many colors as possible in her worksheets. She also asked me to write "Kitty" on it because she claimed that her stuffed animal cat helped her do this worksheet.

This is a basic addition worksheet with symbols next to it so she can count if she does not know the answer: