Learning

Names
Gabi loves that everything has a name. She knows that Mommy's name is "Missa" and Daddy's name is "Ma-chl." She can tell you that her name is "Gabi Twaco." She recognizes all the capital letters in GABI and is working on the letters in her last name.

Gabi knows the names of all these animal friends and baby dolls, too.

Curious George, Tigger, Zaggy, Asha & her Teddy, Baby Ella,
Joey, Claire Bear, Ashley Bear, Rabbit, Penguin, and Gabi


Gabi also knows the names of her playgroup friends and her preschool classmates. It is fun to listen to her tell us who she played with each day.

Amusingly, Gabi also identifies the word "trouble" with herself. If she hears me say "trouble" then she will point to herself and exclaim, "Name!" Maybe I should stop commenting, "I should have named you trouble," whenever she gets into something she shouldn't...

Ashley Bear is Gabi's favorite for nighttime snuggling.
Books
Gabi loves to read books. Last July or August, she started "reading" her first book herself. Feathers is a book about birds, and it just names each bird and writes out the bird's call -- so each page says something like this: "Bluebird. Tru-ly, tru-ly!" or "Kookaburra. Ha-ha-ha!" Our favorite is the Cardinal, since we have them in our backyard and can hear them sing "Birrrdy birrrrdy chip-chip-chip!"

Many of Gabi's most-requested books are featured in these pictures.
Last Fall, Gabi memorized a few more books. The next book that Gabi started reading herself was Hop on Pop. She just "read" the main "vocab words" preceeding each sentence, so we'd hear something like this: "CUP PUP. BALL WALL. ALL FALL. HIM JIM. PAT SAT. PAT CAT. WALK WALK. WALK TALK. SAY SAY."

Gabi then learned the words to Green Eggs and Ham. As she flipped through the story, she would look at the pictures and say, "I am Sam. Eggs. Oh, ham! Do not like them. House, mouse. Box, fox. Train. Rain. Splash! Eggs, oh Ham. Yummy." (Our version of this book isn't a board book, so she didn't always turn pages one at a time, especially towards the end.)

More recently, Gabi memorized some of the words to Go Dog, Go! Gabi's other favorite books include Baby Beluga (which she can sing the appropriate tune for, even though the only words she knows are the title words) and Fox in Socks (her favorite page being the "brick trick" page) and "Caterpillar" (better known as The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and Click, Clack, Moo -- Cows That Type.

At Christmastime, she fell in love with "Grinch" (How the Grinch Stole Christmas) and "Camel" (what she calls The Animals' Christmas Carol--there are camels in the story). In that latter book and others that have music written (such as Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, dinosaurs!), she recognizes the music staff and notes as a song and tells me to sing.

Here, Gabi is reading Rainbow Fish,
another book that she mostly only knows the title words for.
Letters
Two of Gabi's favorite songs have the same tune: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and the alphabet song. Gabi is working hard to get all the words straight, but she definitely has that Mozart melody down.

Gabi is fascinated with the ABCs, so she loves all her phonics toys (some old, some Christmas presents, some hand-me-downs... but all fun).

Gabi loves to press the letters on her phonics toys and hear the letter name, letter sound, and a word that uses that letter. Since she repeats the given words, these phonics toys seem to have augmented her vocabulary incredibly, although I'm not sure that she knows what words like "inchworm" mean. She can tell you some of the words that begin with various letters, though, so she must be learning something.

"Vroom! Vroom! School bus!"


Gabi dancing along with the school bus ABC song.
Clean Up!
Gabi loves to be helpful around the house. When we are unloading groceries, Gabi will pull items out of the bags and hand them to me to put away. Then, of course, she will cheer for herself. :)

She also is good about helping clean up. Depending on the type of cleaning, Gabi sings either "Dust, dust, dust" from her Milk & Cookies Kindermusik class (for dusting, wiping, scrubbing, etc.) or the clean-up song they use in preschool (for picking up toys).

"Dust, dust, dust!"
Prayers
Gabi is also learning to pray. Sometimes she will remind us to say prayers before a meal. At school, they must say the typical preschool prayer before snack, because Gabi started praying like this: "God is good. MMMMM... food! AH-men."