Phonics

Preschool has really sharpened Fiona's understanding of how letters work. Each week they learn how to recognize whichever letter they're learning about in upper and lower case, plus what sound that letter makes. Which is how Fiona winds up walking around the house saying "duh, duh, duh, D!"

Miss Eny is only up through D so far, but Fiona's been demonstrating applied knowledge. Last Christmas she got a puzzle that matched up pictures of words with the first letter of that word (so a picture of a house would go with the letter "h" and so forth). Fiona couldn't figure the puzzle out when we first got it, but this afternoon she put the whole thing together. Help from Daddy was mainly limited to letting her know that it was a picture of a "nest" and not a "bird", or steering her toward "g" instead of "j" on giraffe (since "g" makes a soft "guh, guh, guh" sound as far as Fiona knows).

Still, we're having some confusion. The language is obviously littered with situations like "giraffe" where two letters make a similar sound (just as Fiona has yet to discover that some letters like "c" can make two different sounds). This morning Fiona announced to me that "airplane starts with 'a', and also with 'j'." I was a tad perplexed, so Fiona walked me over to a toy she has that shows various letters with pictures and proceeded to point to a picture of a jet.

And I did find myself telling a white lie at bedtime tonight. We were reading a story about Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) and her horse, Phillippe (princesses, horses--yes, we're in that phase). Fiona sounded out Phillipe's name and announced that "fuh, fuh, Phillippe starts with 'f'."

I paused. I really didn't want to confuse her any further. "Phillippe starts with an 'f' sound, that's right," I said. I've already wound up in enough complicated discussions at bedtime lately.