spelling

Riddle Me This

| patmcg
Claire has started a new game in the car to and from school. She likes to play little guessing games based on letters. For example, today she said, “What’s a park near our house that starts with letter Z-Z-Z-Z Zee?” She says this sounding out the sound of the letter Z a few times, apparently something they do in school. I answer her quiz, “Zilker Park”, to which Claire says proudly, “That’s right! You got it!”  Another good one was, “I am thinking of something that starts with T-T-T-tee, and they have trunks, and there are lots of them all around.”  The answer: trees.

Sometimes the letters are a bit off. One time her hint was, “What’s an animal that starts with the letter L and has a trunk?” I was stumped on this one. Claire’s answer was an ELephant. I told her that elephant starts with an E, not an L, even though the first sound of the word sounds like the letter L, or “el”. Claire was slightly deflated by this but took note and moved on to some more additional questions for me.

You know, spelling really is confusing. I mean really, elephant starts with an E, not an L? That is just not right.


P as in “prenatal”

| patmcg

Claire came home from school the other day with a big white envelope and some brief instructions to fill it with with things starting with P or J. This is, of course, to help kids learn about the different letters and how they apply to real-world situations. We left most of the work up to Claire, and she quickly divined than we should fill her bag with a pen, a pencil, a penny, and some nail polish. The next morning before school, she said excitedly, “I know! Piano!” Then she hurried over to her little toy piano (a small plastic keyboard, really) and dumped it in the bag. We never came up with any J words, at least not ones we had laying around the house that would fit in an envelope.

Tonight over dinner, Kit and I were asking Claire what “P” objects that the other kids found. She mumbled a couple of things, then suddenly blurted out, “I know! Prenatal! I should bring your pills to school, Mom!” I wish she had. I think it is safe to say she would have been the first kid to bring prenatal pills to school for this exercise.

By the way, I think this was Claire’s first real homework assignment. Actually, she did a different pair of letters, I think B and H, a couple of weeks ago.

TODO: Go back and tag all entries before this with “claire” too

First and Last

| patmcg

Kit, her mom, Claire, and I were playing a game called “First and Last” from a deck of cards called “52 alternatives to TV”. This game read as such…

Someone says the name of an animal, and the next person says an animal that starts with the last letter of the name. So if you said “elephant,” the next person might say “tiger.” Take turns saying animals without repeating any until someone can’t thin of another one. The last person left gets to pick the next category (countries, people’s names, etc.).

This turned out to be a pretty fun game. We did not make Claire play since she, uh, cannot read or spell, but she sort of hung around and watched. The game was pretty tough, actually. It went something like this…

Kit: Elephant
Joyce: Tiger
Pat: Raccoon
Kit: Nene (this is a Hawaiian bird from a book Joyce brought back from Hawaii)
Claire: Eagle!

Yes, the three year old jumped in with a good answer. She even said it with real conviction, like she just knew “eagle” was right. We cannot say how Claire knew “Nene” ended in an “e” and “Eagle” started in the same letter. She may have gone by the sounds of the words, or it may have been a lucky guess, or maybe she actually knew what she was talking about. We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and go with the last one.