Ben and Molly’s school held a Breakfast With Santa this weekend, which was awesome, except that even with their self-professed adulation of the jolly old elf (see exhibits A and B)

…they both went super shy when the moment came to actually meet him! Ben sat on his lap and grinned but couldn’t talk and Molly wanted nothing to do with him at all.

They recovered themselves by the afternoon though and sat down to the important business of writing their Christmas lists and letters to Santa. Ben’s 3 Rs are coming along AMAZINGLY (thanks, Miss Heather!!). His reading skills boggle my mind. There is nothing he can’t read, and if he stumbles over a “tricky letter” (today’s example: the “c” in “scene”) he asks for help, nods, and then files the irregular rule away in his “remembering cap” and that’s that – he’s got it down.

Printing has been a bit more of a struggle. His fine motor skills have never come as quickly as the intellectual piece, and he gets frustrated when he can’t reproduce what he sees in his head (in this case, the letters) on the paper to his satisfaction (he also gets frustrated when I praise him for letters that he has formed that he doesn’t feel are up to par, but his perfectionism and the question of to praise or not to praise can be the topic of another post!).

I’m told that there is a sex difference at play – that little girls tend to master the fine motor skills more quickly. The chicken-or-egg part of that equation is still up for debate in my mind – Do girls progress more quickly because we give them more opportunities or do we give them more opportunities because they show more interest/get less frustrated? I will say that Molly is currently showing more interest in and patience for fine-motor-oriented crafting at a younger age than Ben did. Again, definitely fodder for a whole other post!

Anyhoo, his printing is coming along beautifully, when he can be convinced to do it, and he worked extremely hard on his letter to Santa:

It reads:

Dear Santa,

Does Rudolph really have a lightbulb for a nose? (Then, dictated by Ben and printed by Ian) –  For Christmas I would a toy Whiff engine, a toy Diesel engine from Thomas, toy Kevin from Thomas, and a Mighty n Mac from Thomas.

(Closing printed by Ben) – From Ben

Molly dictated her letter to Ian:

It reads:

Dear Santa,

How are your reindeer? I am excited for Christmas this year. I would like things for my dollhouse and dollhouse toys. (Santa brought her the dollhouse last year. There was some prompting by Ian for her list since she just kept repeating “I want Santa to bring me dollhouse.”) Or maybe you could bring me a surprise. I love surprises that are pink!

Love Molly

She adorned it with her decoration of choice, googly eyes, and a wooden heart. Her trademark is googly eye faces – 2 eyes and a mouth made of twisted tissue paper (again with the fine motor skills being in a different ballpark than Ben’s at that age) – but for some reason she couldn’t be convinced to give her Santa letter googly guy a mouth.

Then it was off to the mailbox for the big moment:

Now I can finally sit down and see about getting Santa to make videos for Ben and Molly. (If you haven’t yet heard of the Portable North Pole Console, check it out!) Last year I got the order of events wrong and Ben was very concerned with how exactly Santa knew what he wanted for Christmas when he hadn’t told him yet.

~ karyn

Have you/your kids written your letters to Santa? What’s on your list?