My ABC's - First Poem Recital In Class

our ever reliable wall and the ever reliable manila paper

My little miss preschooler is going to do her first poem recitation in class today. We worked hard to memorize this simple poem for almost a week and I fervently hope her efforts pay off later. If not, she knows it's okay. At least it's good to give it a try.

Eversince she started preschool, we get the same feedback every quarter. To work on her confidence because she tends to be extremely shy and would refuse to answer questions when overcame with shyness. I once mentioned this to her pedia but was told she's probably just borne with that temperament and when she's adjusted to the school set up already she will overcome it on her own. 

Guess what? Towards this last few weeks of 2012 and especially when new year hit, she started showing signs of 'coming out of her cocoon' so to speak. She became even more verbal. I can remember several instances where she would pull the phone from us when we're talking to her grannies (as opposed to her previous dislike of talking to relatives over the phone). Of course, we still had to reprimand her for being rude but to us that's a good sign that she's now willing to talk more, engage with other people more. And I guess the best change that I've noted would be her opening up to talk about school more often. 

I will have to schedule another talk with her class adviser but I hope she noticed the improvements on our little miss just like we did.

Anyways, I'm excited to hear about how her recitation turned out today. Success or not, I do hope she would still willingly share it with us later. 

To mommy-friends who are parents to preschoolers, care to share your tricks on how to teach your kids to familiarize and memorize several paragraphs for activities like this? I actually had a difficulty taking off with this activity because I was struggling with concept of memorization. I was never good at it (I'm more of a logical thinker, I can retain things if I understand the entire concept) so I knew I am going to be lousy at teaching it. I tried to accompany it with signs (the little miss learned baby signing when she was still a baby so it would have been easy) but I didn't find time to research on how to sign the entire poem so I gave up after 2 lines. I know this is just the start of many other 'memorization' activities so I'm hoping to learn other techniques before we take on the next one.