Ellie Gets a Chalkboard

Ellie is usually a monkey--naughty and everywhere--but now that I'm actively teaching her, she's actually a pretty serious little student. My Mom came to visit this weekend and we worked on lots of home projects on my little rehab house! We painted the cockatoo girls' room, of course, and put in the base boards, and then on Monday I painted a chalkboard on the wall, to help Ellie with learning.

My mom was so, so astonished by how much Ellie knew. On Friday night when she arrived, Ellie knew and performed perfectly for:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - and counting lemons up to 5
Picking what object starts with what letter - elephant, apple, banana, cup
And identifying the phonetic letters: A, B, C, E, F

On Saturday I taught her about ducks and cats. We read the "Hello, Duck!" book, which was cute. :)

So anyway, when it comes to learning, Ellie settles down immediately--calm and interested, like an angelic little Kindergartner. She sits on her little play stand near the chalk board and properly and correctly touches all of the items presented... Little cutie! :)

Today I taught her to count how many 'dots' are on the chalkboard (up to five). It was a bit of a challenge to get her to figure out that she was counting *dots* on a chalkboard (they are 2 dimensional, and she's used to 3 dimensional). But she figured it out! We also worked on spelling BELL and BALL--it's clicking, but not all the way there yet.

After about 35 minutes, she hopped off her play stand and onto Isabelle's cage, went in for a drink, and then went off to play with her toys :D

So much fun! :)