Spell check

Cailan has loved playing with his foam bathtub letters since he was a year old. We ended up buying him two sets, because with just one copy of the alphabet there aren't that many words you can spell. For a long time, of course, he just played with them and said the names of the letters. Eventually he started stringing them together in words, but they weren't words pronounceable in English. Now he has started making recognizeable words.

In September, he learned to read the title of his favorite book: The Big Book of Dinosaurs. Soon after that, he was trying to spell it with his foam letters in the bathtub. After a few times with me coaching him, helping him sound out the words and figure out what the next letter should be, he was able to put the letters together himself. This is a big bunch of words, so it wraps around the bathtub:




The spelling is a bit off on the last word, but I'm calling it close enough.

Last weekend, Cailan was taking a bath and playing with his letters, as usual. I was in the bedroom across the hall, folding laundry and popping my head into the bathroom every couple minutes to keep an eye on him. Once when I looked in, he said "I spelled diplodocus!"


I realize there's an entire syllable missing, but I was stunned that he had gotten so close without any help at all from me.

Tonight during his bath, he started working on diplodocus again. I was in there with him the whole time. He would say the word, then say the first couple of syllables, slowly sounding it out trying to figure out what the next letter should be. Once he knew the letter he needed, he'd fish around in the alphabet soup in the tub to find the right letter and slap it up on the wall. Here is what he came up with tonight: