Thursday, November 15, 2007

Comprending concepts

The language development in the past two weeks for Lindsay has been really remarkable. The process of learning to communicate I found fascinating with both girls. Lauren was (and still is) a collector of words. She had probably a hundred or so words when she began pairing them. Lindsay's focus is phrases. Technically, her first word was three words strung together, "Here you go" she would say, handing over her blankets in the morning. If you read Worst Mama, you heard that I made her angry enough in the car that she used her first formal sentence, which was, "I want my drinky, Mama!" I noted today that when I hand her something - a drink, a banana, a cracker - she says, "Cue cue" for Thank you.

Lauren is in the phase right now where I am constantly having to spell words for her. Each week, they formally learn a word - to read, spell, and write it. She sings songs about these words. She came home with a miniature composition book and began drawing pictures of various objects outside (a tree, a bag of leaves, a scarecrow) and attempting to write the word underneath. She wrote "lef bag" and "skercro", and I wrote the words underneath them as neatly as I could manage.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that you're chronicaling your kids' language development. In years to come, these will be precious records. "Cue cue" is especially interesting. When Sister K was very very young, she insisted on naming a doll (a hand-me-down Chatty Cathy) what sounded like Q-Q. I never understood; now maybe you've added meaning to her utterance!

karen said...

As long as Lin's busy explaining oddly named dolls, see if you can coax the true meaning of Glubby out of her!