Early literacy

On Wednesday while the boys were in their co-op classes (Zoë didn't come with us because she needed to go to piano lessons and Andrew wasn't here so Rachel had to drive Zoë in when she took Miriam), Phoebe decided she wanted to learn how to write her name. 

Here is one of her attempts from Wednesday:

That evening all the kids went to the church for youth/primary activities, so Phoebe and I were left at home alone and she decided she'd like to do a little more practice writing her name.

I don't know why E's are always such an exciting letter to write, but they just are! All those lines can make a body get carried away! 

I'm also aware that children should be learning their lowercase letters (since those are the bulk of what we see and use when reading and writing) but, honestly, capital letters are simply easier to make. And I'm fairly confident that Phoebe's kindergarten teacher won't mind "fixing" this "problem" in the future (because I'll most likely be Phoebe's kindergarten teacher).

After writing her own name she wanted to write my name. While I was writing with her to show her how PHOEBE was spelled (she's very confident (if only partially correct) that P is a line with a circle on top, O is just a circle, B is two circles, and E is super fun, she gets confused between A and H, and the order is difficult for her), I helped her sound out MOM.

She's very familiar with the mmmmm sound that M makes, and knows that mmmmm is for mountains and when you draw mountains they look just like M.

So, M...then O...then M again! MOM!

"Your name is so short!" she turned to me and said. "I want to make it longer!"

"Well," I suggested, "If you want to make MOM longer, you can turn it into MOMMY. You already have M-O-M so all you need to add is another M and a Y and you'll have MOMMY."

"Hmmmm...no fanks!" she said. "I don't like Y. I fink what I'll actually add is an E for MOM-EEEE! See? That's better than a Y."

And, you know what, that's really clever enough that I'm not going to argue the matter. 

When she was finished with chalk she decided she wanted to use markers to make some drawing for Grandpa. First she drew this little guy:

She gasped when she was finished with the face. "Oops! He's not happy!" she observed. "This will never do!"

And then she got a fresh sheet of paper and made a much happier-looking Grandpa:

This picture was particularly impressive. It's a bunch of different people caught in a rainstorm, but to me it looks like a person blowing away in a rainstorm. She also signed it...backwards...at the bottom of the page:

Earlier this week she wrote a letter to a friend, inviting her to play. It was all just squiggles and lines on the page, but she spoke her letter aloud as she wrote it, breaking her words into syllables:

"Dear A-ver-y. Do you want to play with me out-side to-day? Will you bring Lu-na when you come?" and so forth. 

It was a very interesting thing for her to do. It's fun to have a front-row seat to her language/literacy acquisition!