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casper talk
As is obvious to a regular reader of this journal, Casper is a voluminous and expressive talker. What I find interesting are the things she still has no grasp of whatsoever, such as personal pronouns, especially the 3rd person singular. First of all, she gets the gender of pronouns wrong all the time. She knows our cat is a girl, but refers to her as "him." This happens to people, too. Secondly, while she has a firm grasp of case in the first person singular (was there ever a talkative 2 year old who wasn't clear about me, my, I, mine?), she's lost in the 3rd person. Possessives are often "hims coat" and she often will say something like "what is him doing?"
She has an incredible memory, especially for verse and songs. Rather a while ago she came back at me with "Cinderella, dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss a fellow; by mistake she kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?" I had recited this to her a total of once, and it seems unlikely she'd heard it repeatedly at school or among friends, as they are too young for jumprope rhymes, this is an obscure one, and it's probably not on the records they listen to. (Those of you who know the family flea's overall linguistic facility, and especially memory for doggerel, will not find this trait a surprise in Casper.) Before eating her breakfast banana today she gave me several verses of "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"
In pre-reading news, she can recognize whole words in a few places, but it's clearly contextual only. That is, she knows that picture has a big sign saying "milk," but she doesn't recognize "milk" in other places. She doesn't really know the alphabet, which we haven't pushed aside from having fridge letter magnets. She sometimes recognizes the first letter of her name, but other times not. She will ask me to write my, or her, or daddy's name when we're drawing pictures, and she'll look at a sign and say "There's words on there," but aside from that, no steps towards reading.
Numeracy is also not a big feather in her cap. She can rattle off the numbers to 20 accurately, but actually attaching them to the concept of the numbers is a stretch. She gets one, and two, and sometimes three, but point to a picture of six cats and ask how many there are and you'll get "One two three four fixe six seven eight nine ten." For a couple of weeks she was interested in reading the same book about numbers and math every night, and I showed her over and over how to put her finger on the thing she was counting and say each number in turn as she did it, but she still hasn't gotten there conceptually.
ION, we've had remarkably little trouble about ceasing nursing. She still asks a few times a day, and I say "remember, we stopped nursing," and at most I get one protesting wail, and then we move on. This is a relief. Dinnertime, on the other hand, has developed into guerilla warfare. Last night we had deliberate spitting out of food onto the floor for the first time. Also, if I never see another thrown sippy cup I will be happy. It's always something.
She has an incredible memory, especially for verse and songs. Rather a while ago she came back at me with "Cinderella, dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss a fellow; by mistake she kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?" I had recited this to her a total of once, and it seems unlikely she'd heard it repeatedly at school or among friends, as they are too young for jumprope rhymes, this is an obscure one, and it's probably not on the records they listen to. (Those of you who know the family flea's overall linguistic facility, and especially memory for doggerel, will not find this trait a surprise in Casper.) Before eating her breakfast banana today she gave me several verses of "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"
In pre-reading news, she can recognize whole words in a few places, but it's clearly contextual only. That is, she knows that picture has a big sign saying "milk," but she doesn't recognize "milk" in other places. She doesn't really know the alphabet, which we haven't pushed aside from having fridge letter magnets. She sometimes recognizes the first letter of her name, but other times not. She will ask me to write my, or her, or daddy's name when we're drawing pictures, and she'll look at a sign and say "There's words on there," but aside from that, no steps towards reading.
Numeracy is also not a big feather in her cap. She can rattle off the numbers to 20 accurately, but actually attaching them to the concept of the numbers is a stretch. She gets one, and two, and sometimes three, but point to a picture of six cats and ask how many there are and you'll get "One two three four fixe six seven eight nine ten." For a couple of weeks she was interested in reading the same book about numbers and math every night, and I showed her over and over how to put her finger on the thing she was counting and say each number in turn as she did it, but she still hasn't gotten there conceptually.
ION, we've had remarkably little trouble about ceasing nursing. She still asks a few times a day, and I say "remember, we stopped nursing," and at most I get one protesting wail, and then we move on. This is a relief. Dinnertime, on the other hand, has developed into guerilla warfare. Last night we had deliberate spitting out of food onto the floor for the first time. Also, if I never see another thrown sippy cup I will be happy. It's always something.
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Heh. I still recite some of that stuff. Have you started her on "The hen went cluck and the duck went quack..."?
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I have the album on cassette somewhere. I should hunt it out. I periodically check to see if it has been rereleased on CD by some miracle, but no. Also not on CD last I checked was that Jack Nicholson/Bobby McFerrin Elephant's Child.
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She read the word "stop" in a book we had read only once, like 8 weeks ago, but I think it's because I only ask her for the words "stop" and "no" and she was on the right side of the 50/50 chance this time.
And so far she can count up to three, but she hasn't connected the whole "stop the numbers when you run out of things you're counting" concept yet.
Her birthday was Sunday. This should be another amazing year.
Oh, yes:
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