The shady part of the day
Rilla knows we don’t water the plants when the sun is shining full on them. Shortly after I began work this afternoon, a note came sliding under my door:
IT IS THE SADE PORT AF THE DAY
As I was deciphering it (yellow crayon on white paper: tricky), a second note whooshed in:
SO SH I WODR MY PLANS
There was a new watering can awaiting her, you see. (Hot pink, of course, as everything must be, including draneyoms.) I opened the door, found her bouncing (because that is how one waits). Yes, you should water your plants now, and mine too, if you wouldn’t mind.
She didn’t mind. 🙂
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tanita says:
I don’t remember how I learned to read – I just… could read, you know?
So, watching this kid learn to read, write, and spell all in one fell swoop is nothing short of AMAZING. I love these notes – please keep sharing.
I totally want draneyoms. I want you to know that I spelt that aloud to Tech Boy, and he knew what they were. There is a good possibility he is prepared to be a super-excellent uncle.
On September 27, 2012 at 7:56 pm
Melissa Wiley says:
I don’t recall any of the other kids doing this much invented spelling. I’m loving it to pieces. 🙂 One thing I notice is that while Rilla is reading really really well, she doesn’t pleasure-read the way her big sisters did the SECOND they could read on their own. (Wonderboy’s relationship to the printed word is a whole different topic, a fascinating one I should write more about.)
So Rilla CAN read, but doesn’t spend as much time nose-to-book as the other girls did at this age. (She adored GIRAFFE AND A HALF the other day, though, and has been glued to the butterfly field guide lately: shades of Jane.) And when I read to her, she nearly always wants a picture book over a more text-heavy form (which is perfectly fine, of course—we only have five gazillion picture books in this house!). She’s definitely a visual-artsy kid, spends much of her day drawing or painting, and when I read to her, I think she’s looking at pictures, not words—in contrast to what I remember the others doing when they first learned to read, fixating on the words.
So I think a lot of this wonderful invented spelling comes from not having the picture of the WORD in her head–she’s spelling by ear; I’m enjoying it to pieces (which I why the blog has been so Rillacentric of late). 😉
I remember Rose haaating, even at six and seven, to spell a word incorrectly—if she took a stab at it, she could see she’d gotten it wrong and then that was that, she’d crumple the paper and be done. But she read so much that by eight or so, she was able to spell to her own satisfaction.
Jane and Beanie were more sanguine about it, though neither ever much cared for writing by hand. (Still. Like me.)
I wish I’d been blogging their passage to reading and writing. All their adorable old notes are crammed in a box in a closet somewhere. 🙂
Wonderboy — oh my, he has a phenomenal visual memory — can spell nearly any word he’s seen once or twice. But struggles mightily with abstract ideas. Like I said, a whole long topic on its own.
On September 27, 2012 at 8:21 pm
Anne Marie says:
Just a :). Because I enjoyed it today.
On September 28, 2012 at 3:24 am
Ellie says:
Oh yes, all three of mine hate, passionately hate to the point of throwing temper tantrums, invented spelling. Meaning: each one in turn refused. Each one in turn insisted that I spell words for them as they composed. They hated being wrong, I think? I am honestly not sure. I was never like that — from a very young age (four, I recall writing stories before I went to school at five), I simply had to write, correct spelling be damned! LOL I am still not a very good speller, and I am still a writer — and I certainly never (consciously) instilled in my kids a fear of spelling incorrectly. None of them are writers — oh, Eli *can* write and write well, according to his college profs, but he’s not a natural storyteller, you know? — and they are all better spellers, each at the age they are now, than I was at 10, 13, 23.
Anyhow! I was always sort of disappointed that none of them were inventive spellers: I think it’s wonderful.
On September 28, 2012 at 7:19 am
Dori says:
My youngest, now 19, was an inventive speller. At the age of 7 he decided he was going to be our chef. He would finish his homework, research recipes online, and then email me the funniest shopping lists. One of my favorites was a recipe and list for Shampain Chikin. So fun!
On September 28, 2012 at 8:20 pm
selvi says:
I love her spelling! Reminds me so much of my L (they must be writing the same language). I save her writing, but often when I look back later I can’t “read” what it says anymore. Maybe a good reason to blog again.
On October 2, 2012 at 10:32 pm