Betty with the Blonde Curls

...Betty does not like to have her hair combed ...
I just can't keep my hands off of it.

Betty gets a post of her own today.

She is that third child who takes all of her learning from the kids ahead of her.

In fact, I tried to help her with some Lego and she pushed my hands away and said, “No, I am going to get help from Michael.”

That made me laugh.

Why should he be better at putting Lego pieces together, than I am.

Though it is true.

I am watching carefully this year and finding out that there are scarves, blossoms, a tiny axe, a brook, or maybe extra scarves that I can share with the other Lego people.

... putting the lego head on a snowman ...

She has long slender fingers which I was looking at.

And I was wondering how tall she will get. 

Richard said that Betty is already taller than all of the kids in Alice’s Grade I class, and Betty hasn’t even started kindergarten.

... thank goodness for the battery operated flickering lights ...

What this does is make Betty seem as though she is much older than she is, just by the sheer height of her.

Richard and Miranda have a family ritual.

They go around the table and tell something that was interesting to them in the day.

Betty just gets silly when we do this.

My guess is that she hasn’t got her mind organized in that fashion – one where she even knows what part of the day she is in, let alone which week of the calendar.

Betty can't figure out what a llama is doing
in the Nativity Scene

But if she gets cued about that great DQ Dilly Bar that we ate, she can remember that pretty well. 

I bought a book that has the words to some of the carols I want to sing with Michael, Betty and Alice.

 We had started with one of the add-on songs, where you add another line to the song. Last month we were doing “there’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza” and “I bought me a cat and the cat bought me”.

I have some great laminated pages that go with the songs and make them easy to teach.

But the carols are harder if there are no pictures.

Betty and I are working on “The first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me”. I find it is easiest to teach songs by just sitting at the table with them, and then I sing a line for a few times, then add another line, then drop some words out of the first line and see if they can fill them in.

Betty likes the animals in this creche.

This works beautifully for Betty.

 I am trying to have some kind of form  or penumonic device that will help me learn what is happening on all of the 12 Day of Christmas. There is not much use in trying to teach something to Betty if she thinks I don’t know it myself, so I have been memorizing 10 lords a leaping, 9 ladies dancing, 8 maids a-milking. Well, that is about it for my little Betty, the blank slate on which I love to drop quarter,  semi-quaveer and tied notes.

 She is almost perfect with “five go-old rings”.

Arta