I had a parent teacher meeting earlier today with Kylie’s day care teachers and I am very happy and proud of the results. If i haven’t mentioned it before, Kylie goes to day care at the Children’s Institute on Eastern’s campus. The teachers here are actual early childhood education certified teachers whom have there degree’s in early childhood education.  This is the first meeting of this year, and I am pleased to say that she is doing exceptionally well.

The teacher (Christy) told me that Kylile displays a vocabulary that is advanced for her age and as a result can express herself very well verbally, and not just well but appropriately using rather large words for a three year old.  Not only can she use large words but she can also use foreign words and phrases correctly. At the moment she can say hello (or the equivalent) in 4 languages (English, Spanish, French, and Japanese) along with a few small phrases in Spanish.

In addition she not only loves pretend play (weither it is in a toy kitchen or stricly imaginary) she also has the ability to relate that pretend play to her real life. In addition we have noticed at home that she knows the difference between real and imaginary, this is something that most children do not disguish between until around age 5.

Kylie gets along with all the children in her class and clearly has a favorite or two. This year she seems to be infatuated with a boy named Jack. When she comes how I ofter hear “I miss Jack” or when she is playing and pretending she often includes Jack.

However, she is not perfcet. Like other children her age and in her class she is currently learning about the impact her actions have on others. For instance, at this age it is common for children to tell other children that they are not their friends one minute and then be suggesting they go play the next. Or to play with one friend on a day when a certain other friend is not at school, only to then ignore the first child when the second is present. Kylie has a tendancy to say someone is not her friend when she is upset at that person, as do most children in her class. So that is something they are working on and we are reinforcing at home.

We are also working on her computer skills at home. She has the Leap Frog ClickStart My First Computer at Daddy’s house that she loves to play, and she has gotten very good at using the mouse and is even becoming good at finding keys on the keyboard. This, of course, makes Daddy very happy as I spend a lot of time on the computer due to work.

All in all Kylie is doing very well with her educational development according to both her teachers and her very proud parents.

We went to Sears today and had Kylie’s Christmas pictures taken. We are a little behind this year, so I do not think we are going to be able to have them sent out with Christmas cards. We will still be able to have one of the pictures as the card though as I was able to get the entire sitting on disk today, which was nice because we normally don’t get it until we pick up the actual portraits. I am not going to put the portraits up on the site yet, but I will at a later time. I will say, however, that they came out very well.

This year Macy’s website had a little section called Be Claus where they let you take a picture and turn the person into the picture into Santa Claus. Kylie thought this was really neat and had lots of fun (with Mommy’s help) turning herself into Santa Claus, and sent me the below Santa greeting.

In the event that the above little flash animation ever stops working, here is a couple of thumbnails of what the final picture looked like:

You can click on the two thumbnails to see larger versions.

We went to the Zoo Boo again this year at the Detroit Zoo. This year in addition to Kylie, Myself, and Mommy we were joined by Mimi and Aunt Melissa. Kylie wore her Ariel (Little Mermaid) costume and once again appeared to have a lot of fun. This is one event that I look forward to every year, and am hoping that it can turn into a yealry tradition. I took a few pictures and I will get them posted into Kylie’s gallery as soon as I can, but this will most likely take me some time. I will post when they are available.