Just in case we forget where the wall is

The girls love to spell things these days. They're on the cusp of reading -- they can read short words and special books made for very, very early readers ("Mat sat. Sam sat. Mat sat on Sam." That kind of thing.) They like to read the newspaper with us pointing out every "the," "and," "in," and other words they see that they know. This is all age-appropriate. I know kids their age who are more advanced, and kids older than them who aren't quite here yet. I feel strongly that this kind of interest in words should be organic, borne from their interest, not in a parental desire to have early readers.

Sometimes they ask us how to spell words as they write them out. Usually this involves silly, four-year-old sentences to caption a drawing. For instance, "This is a baby fairy and she likes her pet dolphin." It also involves a lot of mermaids and ladybugs.

But, last weekend the girls decided they wanted to label things in our house. It was completely their idea and a true joint O+M effort. We helped them spell the words, and they taped them up. Here's what our house looks like now (there are others not shown here, too):


Self-explanatory.


The scribbles on the bottom and side are the crank to open the window and the levers to lock it in place.


Sometimes M gets a little carried away making the letter capital E.


Once they'd labeled the obvious things, they moved on to other items.


They taped this one by the doorbell. It reads "May and Ophelia house."