September 26, 2011

  • 9-26-11

    Grant is talking up a storm these days.  Now let’s see if I can remember what he has said…

    We say a school bus the other day, and he saw that there were no kids in it, and said, “No kids in ‘em!”  And then in a book he say a picture of a school bus with “kids” in it (they were really owls), and he said something like, “yes kids in it!”  And he copies a lot of what Madeleine says.  Madeleine has gone around saying things like, “I’m really mad!”  So now Grant goes around saying “I’m re-ee mad!” a lot.  (That “re-ee” is “really” without the “l” sound.)  He’s even said it in the middle of the night when he seems to be asleep. 

    Last night before Grant went to bed, we were upstairs reading books in his room.  He heard noise from downstairs (Brian was watching TV) and he said several times “What is it?” and “Calling me??”  He was very clearly saying that someone was calling him and who was it and what did they want?  I thought it very cute.   

    I know there’s more that he says that I should write down, but I’m forgetting.  I’m so busy thinking about BrickCon and LEGO and how to build what I’m going to take that I forget to write things down in time. 

    I do know that we were playing a letter sounds game on the computer yesterday, and Madeleine started acting like she didn’t know and she was too tired to do it (a common thing; she tends to not read to the level  she’s capable of because she’s “too tired”), so I asked Grant what made the sssss sound, and he knew it was the letter S.  He also knew which letter makes the sounds for the letters T, P, and A right then (those are the only ones that came up; I’m sure he knows even more).  When I gave him the hard C sound, he told me “kee” was the name of the letter, which is a good guess.  After Madeleine saw that Grant got it and she hadn’t said it, she got a little more energetic about answering the questions, but then got pouty and went away.  That girl is so smart, but so often doesn’t want to show us what she knows.  I don’t think she likes the potential of being wrong, perhaps.   Just like me, of course, if that is the case.  She’s read words like “creek”, “dull”, “points”, and “highway”.  She read the name “New York” off the neighbor girl’s shirt several months ago.   And yet she’ll so often say she can’t read even the most simple words that I know she can read.  So instead of trying to make her read to me, I just keep reading to her and exposing her to words and sentences and language patterns, knowing she’ll soak it up even if she doesn’t want to spit it back to me. 

    Madeleine says all sorts of funny and wonderful things, too.  One thing I remember was that she said Saturn’s cousin was coming to visit Saturn, and that Saturn’s cousin lived at the tip of New York right next to Pennsylvania.  Okay, that’s crazy that my 4-yr old knows that New York borders on Pennsylvania.  We don’t live there; we don’t really know anyone who lives there;  and yet she still knows.  She’s always asking about words I use; we had a very long discussion about the word “instantaneous” the other day.  Turning the light switch on = instantaneous.  Dropping a piece of paper = not instantaneous.  Today I had to spend several minutes discussing the word “shield”.  She was using a cup to shield her hands from the water in the shower, and I said so, and then she wanted to know what that meant, and I went on and on with examples of shielding.   The other day there was some word we were talking about with the prefix of “in-“ and I explained that that meant “not” and she wondered why and I went on and on about words I could think of with the prefix “in-“ meaning “not”.  Wow, how’s that for a nerd raising a nerd…? 

     

    Anyway, I should get back to the building…..  5 days to go….