Yo, word up!

Word (wêrd) n. any sound or combination of sounds (or its written or printed symbol, customarily shown with a space on either side of it but none within it) forming meaningful element of speech, conveying an idea or alternative ideas, and capable of serving as a member of, the whole of, or a substitute for, a sentence.

It seems Ethan has inherited my love of words. I’m also extremely passionate about grammar and punctuation, but he doesn’t seem overly enthusiastic about such trivial things … yet. It will come; he just needs more time.

I can’t remember too many details about my scholastic life prior to age 8. Memories of my first 2-3 years at primary school are sketchy. But I am fairly certain that I was not learning about onomatopoeia, alliteration, metaphors, similies, synonyms, adjectives and compound words when I was 5 years old.
I am impressed to see what Ethan is learning at school, and even more impressed to witness his obvious enthusiasm for it.

He is a good little reader. Only now he reads everything he sees. EVERYTHING. This is not always a good thing!

At the moment, he is constantly pointing out compound words. He does it so much that Tyler has started to copy him. The other day while we were driving in the car, Tyler piped up with: “Mummy, is ____ a compined (compound) word?”
Tyler has no idea what a compound word actually IS, but it made me giggle.

Anyway, back to Ethan.
As I mentioned, he is all about the compound words. But that’s not all. Oh no. He knows that “er”, “ur” and “ir” all have very similar sounds. He knows about the silent “h” and the silent “l”. He knows about changing “y” to “ies” when making a word plural. He knows what sound “ph” makes. He calls “y” Mr. Pretender, and knows it can stand in for a vowel. He knows what a verb is. He knows what an adjective is. He understands word families. He recognises pallindromes (this is 99.9% due to the fact that my own name is a pallindrome, and I explained it all to him one day). He is (in the process of) learning that you usually don’t have more than 2 vowels in a row.

He still makes plenty of mistakes in his writing, but I like the fact that he is encouraged to spell everything on his own. The other day, he wrote a story at school about eating candy floss at the gala. He said it tasted “delishis”. How cool is that? He sounded it out. It looks right. That’s good enough for me (as long as he learns the proper spelling eventually, of course).

Every morning, while we walk to school, I test Ethan on his spelling. The kids all have “ring words” which are laminated tags on a key ring containing words that they have to learn how to spell. The teacher tests them each week, and then new words are added.

His current list includes words like:

chest
guest
suggest
thrill
skill
babies
because
helpful
afterwards

… along with some easier ones.

Believe it or not, he actually gets a kick out of having some harder words to learn. He enjoys the challenge. I think that’s pretty cool.

Ethan’s love of spelling also extends to writing.
Yesterday was a school holiday. I still had to work, so Ethan played and drew alongside me in the playroom/office. He wrote a bunch of little stories about going to the Easter show, and I received my usual pile of pictures and notes saying “I love you Mummy” and “You are so beautiful Mummy”. My favourite one from yesterday says: “To M. From E.” It made me smile.

It pleases me to see Ethan’s growing love of words.
I hope one day we can complete crosswords together. It would be nice if he asked for a Thesaurus or a Lexicon for his birthday. And I wouldn’t complain if he won lots of money at one of those Spelling Bees.

But most of all? I hope he continues to write.
I want to run out of storage room for all his little notes.
As he grows up, I hope he writes letters telling me that I’m a mean Mum (yes, I did that to my poor mother!) and letters telling me that he had a bad day at school (yes, I did that too). I hope he writes stories about things he’s done and things he dreams of doing.
When he leaves home, I hope he continues to write thank you notes to relatives after each birthday. I hope he writes about his aspirations in life. I hope he writes lyrics to songs. I hope he writes A-grade essays at University (if he goes).
When he gets married, I hope he writes beautiful love letters to his wife. I hope he writes heartfelt words to his children, telling them how proud he is of them. And I hope he writes the odd card to his Mama, to tell her that he loves her, and that she’s still beautiful, even when she’s really old.