Sounds

My husband tells this hilarious, to me anyway, story about how, when he was little, he thought his name was "Chroy" and it was only when he learned how to spell and understand the concept of letters that he recognized his name is actually Troy. We have, on a couple of different occasions, sat around saying "Chroy, Troy, Chroy, Troy," and realizing that they don't sound very different at all.

I've been working a lot on reading with my reluctant learner. Garrett is, I think, a pretty intelligent kid. His vocabulary knocks the socks off of the majority of kids his age, he loves learning about anything that he can get his hands on, like science and cooking, his attention span for older than age appropriate chapter books is phenomenal and he'll sit and watch documentaries on any number of topics. Just yesterday he was watching one on Abraham Lincoln and he's been known to sit for over an hour and listen to the history of the Catholic church. But when it comes to learning in a traditional environment, all bets are off. "You want to me sit? You want me to study? You must be kidding," is basically his life's mantra.

Why would anyone want to learn how to read when it involves sitting and studying at the same time? Especially when someone else can just read to him. His little brother has a much stronger desire to unlock the mystery of the written word than he does.

But I found a website (www.starfall.com) that's working for us. The first few days went very well and he was actually asking for reading lessons. The newness has worn off and I now have to force the reading time but he will do it without crying which is progress. One of the activities involves matching letters to the rest of a word. So, today we had the work ink and a column of extra letters. A picture of a pink crayon appeared and Garrett was supposed to choose from the list the letter which would turn the word ink into pink. He is very good at this game and was plugging a long until we got to the word drink.


We had the letters p, dr, w, and s to choose from.

"Drink," he said, or so I thought.

He screwed up his face. "I don't see it."

"Well," I said, "look at it again."

"Jrink," Garrett said more loudly. "J. J. Jrink. There is NO J. How can I spell jrink without a J?"

I had never before noticed my son asking me for a jrink of water but apparently that's what he's been doing. I didn't want to correct him in any kind of negative way so I simply helped him along.

"Duh. Er. Ink," I said. "Drink."

He looked at me skeptically. "That one then," he said as he pointed to the dr.

"Drink!" The computer woman announced happily when he'd completed it. And a sort of sad, sort of confused, sort of awakened look flashed across Garrett's face.

I suspect that jrinks will, from here on out, be referred to as drinks.