Making Words

We have these letters of the alphabet refrigerator magnets, and lately Alexander has been asking me to spell all sorts of words for him. We'll often start with one word - "oat" - then try to make other words that rhyme with it. Alexander will add a new letter to make a new word - "boat," "coat," "goat."

The other day, he looked at the letters and said, "Let's spell 'Leo.'" (Leo is the younger brother of one of his classmates.)

He grabbed the L, then said, "ee, ee, ee," grabbed the E, then said, "oh, oh, oh," and tacked on an O as if he spells words all the time.

I was pretty surprised. I had no idea he could do this.

Next, he wanted to spell 'boat.' He got the B and the O easily, but needed help with the A (and probably didn't fully understand why it needed to be there.) He plucked up a T for the "t-t-t" sound to finish off the word.

'Box' was his next word. The O gave him a bit of trouble, since he was only thinking of the long O sound. And even though he called it a Z, he knew the X made the "ks" sound (not that he can say it yet...maybe that's why he called it a Z.)

After that he said, "I'm done with this now," and that was that.