She is only five and in her first year at primary school so these are very early days in the growth of her literacy.
When Phoebe read it she was a little outraged and said that I wasn't the best. There was a bit of play actig going on too. Then she grabbed the post-it notes and bustled in to the front room where she picked up a pen and crouched in order to write this:-
If you cannot decipher it immediately, let me help you. It says, "Everybody is the best in my family". It was a kind of protest in defence of her entire family. How could Grandpa on his own be "the best"? That was not right and in her little five year old mind she briefly felt she was standing up for justice.
I love that note.
By the way, Phoebe is left-handed like her father and left-handedness does not assist in the acquisition and mastery of writing skills in this right-handed world. However, as you can see - she's very much on the road to literacy.
Grandpa might not be the best, but this is the best post I've seen in a while! Two of my four grandchildren are lefties. The two boys.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't yet, perhaps you can tell Phoebe the story of the famous Chinese saying: 此地無銀三百兩 (in case the characters don't come through, that's "no 300 taels of silver here!").
ReplyDeleteThat's quite good for a five year old.
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely a good way to help with reading and writing. One of my twin grand daughters is getting quite good at her letters, drawing stick figures and labelling them mum and dad. They will be four next week and hasn't that time flown! Seems like just a few months ago they were tiny newborns.
ReplyDeleteChildren always go to the heart of things and it always comes as a shock!
ReplyDeleteThat is pretty impressive and a great idea.
ReplyDeleteLove the fact that she thought “the audacity of the man to say he is best!”
I love this - both that you put up these notes and Phoebe's reaction to the "best" one :-)
ReplyDeleteLike Phoebe's, my writing started out in a phonetic manner. I wasn't yet at school (in Germany, children usually start elementary school at 6) but had learnt a bit of reading and writing through my sister, who was already in her first year when I was still in kindergarden. I wrote a letter to my Opa (Grandpa) and spelled the words as I pronounced them in my Swabian dialect. My grandparents kept that letter for the rest of their lives; we found it after my grandma's death in 2001 when we had to empty the house. Unfortunately, I don't know what has become of it, but I remember word by word, letter by letter what I wrote.
Clever in her handwriting and thinking.
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