Word Play

Since learning to read, Mitchell has become very interested in words…he analyzes the letters, moves them around to make other words and asks lots of questions about words in general.

For example, one night he asked me, “Why isn’t there a ‘day’ in tomorrow?” I didn’t quite understand what he meant, so I asked him to explain his question to me. After a huge sigh, he said, “You know, yesterDAY, toDAY…why isn’t the word ‘day’ in the word ‘tomorrow’?” Great observation on his part. I had never even thought of that. But he’s right. I guess it’s just another one of the conundrums of the English language.

When we had Mitchell’s parent-teacher conference in October, his teacher told me that he looks for sight words all of the time and that he likes to rearrange letters in words or pick out letters to spell words that he knows. He’ll tell me, “There are 3 sight words in my name…me, it and he.” He’ll even go into an explanation of how you need to move letters around to make words out of a big word.

When you have a 6-year-old around, you begin to realize how they take everything literally. In our neighborhood, the cul-de-sacs are all named ___ Court. On Halloween, one of the courts hosts a Halloween parade. We kept saying that we were going to the court for Halloween. The only court that Mitchell knows is a tennis court. So he thought we were going to the tennis court on Halloween. We started walking down the street towards Floss Flower Court and Mitchell said, "I didn't know there were tennis courts down here." I was confused since I didn't know he was associating the word "court" with a tennis court. So I asked him what he meant, and he said, "Mom, you said we're going to the courts."

It's also amusing when he repeats something his teacher says to the class. One morning he asked me if there was food and shelter in Hawaii. At home, we don't often say "food and shelter" when referring to a location. I told him yes, there is food and shelter in Hawaii. So he asked if we could take a plane there. I told him we could, but it's not likely that we will anytime soon because it would be a long plane ride. He said that was OK...we could take a boat instead!

They have also been learning about other countries and other parts of the world in his class. One night he said to us that there are places in the world where it's already tomorrow. He's actually brought that up a few times. If it's light where we are, he'll say it's dark on the other side of the world. I don't think he quite grasps the why of it yet, because we asked him if he learned that the Earth rotates and that is why we have night and day and that is why it is daytime on the other side of the Earth when it's nighttime here. He said no, he just knows that it's dark over there.

It's fun to see things through his eyes as he's learning about words, reading, writing and geography.