At the beginning of the school year in August I was amazed at how much Julianne's drawing had improved from the scribbles she had been doing during the summer. During our school activities Julianne keeps a journal. These journal entries usually consist of answering a question concerning the Bible story we have been focusing on for the week. Her first picture in August was a picture of her which consisted of a circle, a few dots for facial features, two lines for legs, and scribbles for feet. This was pretty impressive compared to the non-organized scribble she had been doing weeks earlier. Throughout the fall and now into the winter her drawings of people have become even more detailed. Although she sometimes draws a circle for a head and a circle for a body, most of the time she just draws one circle for the head and makes the arms and legs come off of this circle. She now draws circles for the eyes with a dot in the middle for the pupil, a dot for a nose, a curved line for a smiling mouth, two ears, hair (most of the time curly), arms, legs, and scribbles for feet and hands. She almost always draws underwear and sometimes even draws clothes on top. Six months ago I would have not expected to see this improvement in her drawing because she simply did not have the motivation to spend any length of time coloring, but she now could sit and draw for hours at a time. She also has begun caring about coloring within the lines in the past month or so.

Another recent development in the past few weeks is her interest in writing letters. Coming into the school year she could recognize most letters, but now she knows their sounds and how they are formed. For each letter we learn a song that includes the letter's sound and practice tracing the letter with our fingers on a tactile letter card. Although we're going through the whole alphabet, we've also been focusing on the specific letters of her name and knowing the order they belong in. Starting in January I've begun asking her to begin tracing the letters of her name. After focusing on tracing the "J", which she regularly writes backwards, she just took off and wrote all the other letters on her own. Sometimes she needs to look at her name and use it as a guide, but sometimes she can write her name by herself (with a little bit of guidance and redirection from mom - like "What letter comes next?") Writing her name is probably her least favorite writing activity, but she absolutely loves to sit and "write" about anything else. Mostly she is just writing a string of letters and making up what they say, but sometimes she tries to sound out words and will write the first letter for a word. The other day she was drawing a picture of Jesus in her journal and after being reminded of the Jesus song (It spells His name and is sung to the tune of bingo), she wrote the word "Jesus" with a little bit of guidance from me. Just as she can sit and draw for hours at a time, she can also sit and write for hours at a time. Last week she spent an hour making a birthday card for our friend Daniel. It is such a pleasure getting to see the ways that God is growing and developing our little girl.


A drawing done by Julianne on August 24, 2010


A drawing done by Julianne on January 25, 2011


After writing her name she painted the letter "Q" with q-tips


Writing in her writing journal


Julianne wrote her own name - you can tell the J is backwards and not all letters are formed correctly but she's getting the idea


This was a list that Julianne wrote - she listed all the presents she and Lorelei got for Christmas


A story Julianne made


Some of Julianne's early writing attempts in September 2010 - the letters you see written were either written by me or I took her hand and helped her wtite them- the rest is scribbles


When I ask Julianne to smile for the camera, this is usually the result - I was taking a picture of the cute outfit Mimi got for Julianne


Wearing a pitcher as high heels