21 months – Busy Schedule

Starting in the middle of September Sophia’s schedule got very busy because we signed up for many parent-child classes. On Mondays – movement class at Peridance, on Tuesdays – sing along at Hootenanny, on Thursday – swimming, on Friday – Russian language and on Saturdays – Montessori. Some of the classes were amazing and others not so great. At the end we ended up dropping Peridance because it turned out to be a discipline class versus play/having fun.

The Peridance class started good, until Sophia was expected to wait for 5 girls to walk in line before her turn. Waiting for her turn is something Sophia does not enjoy that much at her age.

The Russian classes were the “hit”. We take them at Jewish Center – Kibbutznik Russian Immersion Initiative in Park Slope. The Russian playgroup is not religious and the teacher “tetia Lena” is absolutely excellent. She does puppet shows, various manual activities, singing, movement, poems in Russian. Tetia Lena is a pro.

Swimming at Aqua Beba is also excellent and worth the commute to Williamsburg. Sophia showed progress: at first she started really kicking her legs, and by the end of October she also started using her hands more. Sophia always needs to have a motivational toy thrown ahead of her, otherwise she would not swim or not move legs, arms:)

The singalong music class at Hootenanny was a disappointment: we decided to try a different teacher instead of Pete whom we LOVE. We thought it would be good to change, but the teacher ended up not being nearly as good as Pete and we can’t wait to get back to Pete’s class again.

Montessori class gave us a lot of new ideas and perspectives and showed how much Sophia is capable of doing. For example in Montessori class Sophia learned how to set the table and bring the dirty dishes back. She also learned how to take the toys from the shelves and put them back to the shelves. Something that sounds so easy, yet extremely hard to implement if you have never seen it done by toddlers.

What’s new with Sophia?

Sophia loves to sing songs. She actually managed copy melodies and even sing 1-2 lines of lyrics. Her favorite songs this month are: “Antoshka”, “Chunga Changa”, “Trout old Joe”, “Goodbye, farewell, so long, my friends”.

She started using a lot of verbs like: “tetia bejit”, “mashina gudit”, and also started making 3 word sentences in Russian and Turkish such as: “papa na rabotu ushel”. She also names familiar songs when we play on Spotify. For example she recognizes “Valtz of the flowers” by Tchaikovsky and also can tell Bob Marley and Miles Davis.

This month Sophia was invited to a party and she had a great time dancing and also asking up to flip her.

Sophia asks us to take out yoga mat and do yoga.

Also she likes doing push ups

She showed some impressive for a toddler focus at the piano.

Sophia loves putting on cloth, especially her moms high hill shoes and hats.