The Benefits of "Review"

This morning, Samuel wanted to look at all his preschool work, which I had in a stack and hadn't gotten around to doing anything more concrete (I was leaning toward throwing it out because I am the total opposite of a packrat - just a procrastinating one - but now I'm thinking to three hole punch and keep in a binder).

One of the pages contained some drawings of food he would like to have in a sack lunch - juice box, cookie, banana, apple, and rice krispie treat. The drawings were not very recognizable except that I had labeled them so that's how we knew what they were supposed to be. I talked about how much better he can draw now and he decided to draw the same things on another piece of paper to compare. I would show the two pages here, but he chose to draw the items with a yellow marker and the photo just doesn't come out.

However, I will tell you that his drawings were all recognizable. The benefit to Samuel is that he is able to look and see just how far he has come in a year. He sometimes gets very frustrated when his drawings don't come out perfect. So this is good to show him that he is getting better if he practices.

He has also decided that he wants to do this exercise every year, so I'm going to have to make sure I keep these two drawings in a place I will remember and make a note so I will remember to do it again next year. Now that we came upon this exercise by accident, I can see it having benefits in other areas of learning, especially in writing and drawing.