Well, this last weekend marked a real milestone.  Karina came to me with a crayon and a piece of paper and asked me to write out some words.  So, I told her that I would help her sound out some words.  I wrote down the word H..A..T and she sounded it out and said…..Hat.  So we tried it again with CAT.  Again she was able to sound out the word.  One more try and we did MAT.  Success again.  She then spent twenty minutes asking me to write out words like blanket, flower, picture, etc.  I would exaggerate the sounds and she would name the letter.  Very impressive.  Very exciting stuff.  Karina is almost counting to 50 by herself now.  She makes on average two to three mistakes between the number one and the number fifty.  We are going to try and get to one hundred before September. 

Karina loves to have me read her books.  We go to the library every two weeks and get about a dozen books.  About a week ago, I watched as Karina sat down and paged through about twenty of her books all on her own.  She was engrossed in what she was doing for nearly an hour – a miracle record for her to play by herself uninterrupted.  This week we will go and get some truly easy readers and see if she can master a few of them by herself.  Will be posting pictures and video from Karina’s dance recital a few weeks ago later tonight.  Very cute stuff.  Right now I need to go help Karina fill the watering can to water our vegetable garden.  Will post some pictures of the little gardener.  Then we go bicycle riding.