Peacocking Momma

Well, I guess peahenning is more accurate but it doesn't sound nearly as proud. Lorelei has taken what she is learning about letter sounds from school and applying it to her prolific writing at home. For awhile she couldn't read back her own writing, even when it was accurately or phonetically written. Now she has moved to the next level and is able to read back her writing. That is a true benefit to us because her writing frequently doesn't follow general conventions (left to right and top to bottom). What looks like gibberish is actually well written. For example,

papi
cho
u
om
am
te
mami

Other than the first and last lines, I didn't think that this "said" anything, but when read from bottom to top and paying no attention to line breaks it says " mami, te amo mucho papi". (Mommy, I love you Daddy) Sweet.

So I started doing some research into traditional Spanish language literacy pedagogy. I am still mostly mystified, but I did find a list of high frequency words in Spanish by grade level (20 words per list pre-K through 5th grade). So I sat with Lorelei and started through the list. She blew through the pre-K list and we made it half way through the kindergarten list before it was time for bed. I realized that she didn't know the sounds in Spanish for j, ll, ch, qu, or n(imagine the tilde). I gave her a quick tutorial and she sucked it in! She was also noticing words within words or related words such as lado and helado. Seriously amazing to witness. Yesterday she continued the list with Andres and finished the kindergarten and first grade lists. There was a lot more stumbling about on the 2nd grade list. For those who are really interested I'm attaching the word list with asteriks next to the words she struggled with.

Pre-K: a, azul, bajo, mi, mesa, pan, mama, lado, la, papa, me, no, esa, el ,en, cuna, dos, mi, de, los

Kindergarten: alto, flor, blusa, ella, ir, leche, ms, nino, padre*, por, si, tan, sobre, sin, tras, color, al, dia, bien, chico

1st: bonita, arriba*, fruta, globo*, estar, cafe, letra, luna, luz, muy, noche, nombre, nosotros, nunca, ojo*, pelota, porque*, rojo, te, usted

Yesterday afternoon while Emma and I were napping and Andres was running, Lorelei worked on writing out her numbers. She is a funny, funny girl.
siete, uno, dos, tres, nueve, sinko, kuatro, onse