What do they know?

I don't like testing the children, but I do it anyway, because I am deeply insecure about not actually knowing what they know.

So I checked Emer's actual ability to count today, and she's got it - not recitation, but symbols representing quantities, adding one to get the next number, and so on. So that's ok. She is fuzzy on numbers greater than five - she used to be able to recite quite high, but I think linking them to concrete countable objects meant reciting didn't work any more.

Linnea still can't read but nonetheless read some Calvin and Hobbes aloud the other day. I'm finding it all incredibly frustrating, but my current tactic is to leave her to it, keep doing the Peter and Jane when she wants to, and let her watch her phonics DVDs as much as she likes.

Emer isn't much into writing or letters and Linnea has no current interest in numbers for their own sake. That's ok.

But sometimes I wish I had a performing seal or two in the family. I'd like, you know, an academic show-off. I'd know where I stood.