Reading and writing tend to go hand in hand, so in addition to her love of reading, Sophie likes to write, too. From the time she had just learned her letters, she loved to sit at the table and write notes, which was sometimes a painful activity for me as she would ask me how to spell each and every word. This is actually Jack's deal as of late. It took about 10 minutes to tell him how to write the word "grape" this morning. Who has this kind of time??
This year, for Valentine's day, Sophie decided to hand-write all 48 valentines to the 2 classes she was exchanging cards with. This was no easy feat, and it took up until the very last minute to finish them. But I loved the sentiment of it all.
She's moved past asking me how to spell words and prefers to do it on her own. I find it interesting to see how she writes certain words phonetically, which gives me a glimpse of how she sees certain words in her mind. Here's a menu she wrote for an impromptu family Superbowl Party we had. See what I mean about phonetic spelling?!
I have always been a good speller, so it's somewhat instinctive for me to read her writing and want to make corrections. But, her teacher reminded me that this phonetic spelling is totally normal and all part of the process, so rather than correcting all the misspelled words, it's better to allow her to focus on content, or even punctuation and capitalization.
Two days ago, I got a note from Mrs. Butler that she had submitted one of Sophie's writing samples to the school writing fair, and she had won for Kindergarten. She needed my permission to let her continue on to a statewide contest, which we are of course very excited about. The topic she had written about was Harriet Tubman, and I love the illustration she drew along with it.
But what's really hilarious to me, is the writing sample that was tucked behind this one in her folder. It was written during a free writing period during a week when Sophie was particularly struggling with the dynamics of having a younger sibling, so she decided to write about her yakety-yak brother named Jack. The picture truly depicts the exchanges the two of them have on a daily basis. And she's right - he really is a yakkety-yak! But he's sweet, and funny and he ADORES her. We love him, and I know she does too!
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