Saturday, May 17, 2008

Big news today: Isabel is now the proud of owner of sneakers with laces that she can tie all by herself. (Also big news: sneakers with laces are expensive! Hopefully her feet don't grow for a while.)

Our biggest, current learning goal is to get Isabel reading fluently. She's progressing well - knows her letters and letter sounds ("phonemes," which is a fun word to say) and is starting on basic blending. Drilling basic phonics facts is pretty much a daily occurrence now, but today stands out as the day that Isabel mastered vowels. It helps that there's as many vowels (we're not tackling the "sometimes-y" conundrum yet) as there are fingers on a hand, and that has proven to be an excellent reference point. It also helps that we are a family of silly-song singers and the "e-i-e-i-o" verse of Old MacDonald is an easy way to memorize vowels: Old MacDonald had a vowel, AEIOU... And one of those vowels started a word, AEIOU...

One of Isabel's favorite activities is to think of words that start with short-vowel sounds, for the "here and there and everywhere" parts of the song. Pet peeve, though - ABC book writers and illustrators who do not stop to consider that small children will forever associate their books' pictures with specific letters. Grr. Somebody talk to these people. No matter how many times I correct and remind her, Isabel still knee-jerk calls out "Crocodile!" as a short-vowel A word. At this point she does catch and correct herself ("Oh, wait - that's C!"), so it's fine. But when there are so many non-confusing a-words to be had, why must one choose "alligator," so easily confused with "crocodile"? Vent over.

We AEIOU'd apples, alligators, elephants, Elmo, Isabel, igloos, octopuses (octopi? has that plurality question ever been resolved?), and umbrellas, among others. By the end of the day, Isabel was reciting her vowels without the need to sing them. We also discussed what makes vowels different from consonants (they are voiced phonemes that aren't formed by blocking or stopping air flow), experimented with holding our mouths in different ways while pronouncing short-vowel sounds and figured out different ways to make phonemes (hissing through teeth, tongue on the roof of the mouth, teeth on lips, plosives, etc). As usual with these sorts of exercises, it all ended up rather loud and silly. Reviewing this evening, however, Isabel easily recalled what makes vowels different from consonants.

Mammals were also a discussion point today - how to determine if an animal is a mammal (hair/fur, live birth, milk), different animals that are and are not mammals (birds proved to be tricky, leading to a comparison of hair, fur and feathers), defining herbivores, carnivores and omnivores and then a very interesting discussion about how people are and are not like animals, spurred by Isabel's adamant belief that people are NOT animals ("But Mom, people are just different!"). Later in the day, I think intrigued by our earlier discussion of whether or not ostriches are mammals, Isabel asked where ostriches live. Nick figured that they must live in Africa, because they appear in The Lion King (the logic is flawed but he was right!) . I wondered if they might also be in Asia, so we looked it up when we got home (ostriches are native to Africa, but also once-upon-a-time inhabited the Middle East and are domesticated worldwide).

Our last look-up of the day was Isabel's out-of-the-blue question about what the "line" above her upper lip is called, why it's there and what it does (philtrum, it is formed during fetal development and it allows for greater movement of the upper lip). Our related discussion also covered the importance of the lower jaw, during which Isabel surprised me by correctly figuring out that if our lower jaws did not move, we would be unable to speak or eat.

In addition to fun reading, we also read through Bruce McMillan's Sense Suspense and talked about our five senses and what senses we'd use for each item pictured. I suggested licking the palm tree, which was met with giggles. Mommy is silly.

As for Aidan - well, he's easy. Isabel is helping me show him the parts of his face and body, and she's so chatty that between the two of us, he's getting ample exposure to language. I suspect he will be an early talker, as his sister was, based on the number of early words he has. He had a lot of fun today with a game that consisted of handing me one of three items - I'd lay them out in front of him, carefully repeating the name of each three times, then ask him to give me one. He got it right about half of the time, and he absolutely loved the clapping and "yay!" he got from Isabel and me when he'd hand over the right object. After a couple rounds, he lost interest and we simply clapped and cheered with him for a bit. Babies are so delightful.