Picking up smiles where I last left them

As I mentioned in my last blog, my parents and my nieces and one of my nephews were here visiting us. The youngest niece, who is now 4 but will be five in exactly two weeks walked around here acting like she was a baby. When we asked her a question, she would shake her head either yes or no and pretended she was afraid. I had an idea. I decided to play a little game with her to see how she would respond. Even though I knew her age, I asked her how old was she in order to see how she would answer. When she held up 4 fingers, I knew I had to put my plan into work. I then said, "Oh my, babies hold up fingers, but big girls who are about to be five would say they are five." I waited to see what would be the response and then my niece said, "I'm a big girl and I am going to be five." I said, "I don't know, only babies shake their heads and don't talk." She said, "I can talk because I'm going to be five." I then said, "I still don't know, if  babies are here, then they need to go away and make room for all big kids." My niece then went over to the trash as if she was throwing something away and came back smiling and said with a loud voice, "Aunt Barbara, I threw the baby in the trash and the big kid is all here." I gave her a high five and then moved on to plan nunber two.

I then asked my almost five year old big kid niece if she knew her ABC's and numbers and she said yes. I asked her if she could read and she said that she could not. I took out a piece of paper and wrote the word "THE" on the paper. I sounded the T and the H sound out for her and then spelled it and then said the word. I asked her if she could do it, she said yes because she was a big kid. So I told her to go in the room and practice it and then come back when I called her to see if she could read it. I let a few minutes pass and then I called her back in the room and sure enough, she was anxious to tell me what the word said. At first she spelled it out and then proceeded to pronounce it and at first she kept wanted to say "theef" and each time I would correct her and say "the" not "theef". She said she was going back in the room to practice it and when she came back out, she spelled it out again and sounded the word out and when she got it right, she jumped up and down saying she could read. Keep in mind, this is the same person who pretended to be afraid.

So we had to go to the store and my niece would not put that paper down, she practiced it in the store and then back home and when we got back home, she said that she knew her word and I asked her what was it and she pronounced it right. High fives and smiles were everywhere. So on the next day, I decided to take it up one notch. I took a bigger sheet of paper and wrote: "The cat ran." The older sistes kept saying she will not be able to do it. I told them they had to be patient with her and she will get it. So my 4 year old niece and I sat down and we went over each letter, then sounded out each word and each time she would say the word, she pointed to it and waited for my approval that she was right. So she wanted to sleep with her new paper and when she woke up the following morning, she could hardly wait to get to her new words. She called my name and said she was ready to read to me and I sat as she pulled out her paper that I had written on.  She started out sounding out the T and she finally read "The cat ran." If you could have been here to see the smile on her face, it would have probably brought tears to your eyes.

The night before it was time for them to leave and go back to MS, my mom was packing up their things to make sure they had everything and she told my mom that she could not forget her paper, so my mom put it on top of the refrigerator so it would not be forgotten. When everybody got up to get breakfast and then get on the highway, my niece made sure my mother had her paper and she asked me if I wanted her to read it to me before she left. I insisted she read it. I told her that I will call her on tomorrow to see if she can still read it and ask if she would like that. She shook her head yes and I said, "Well I guess the baby is back then." She said, "oh no, the baby is not back, I'm a big kid and I can read too."

Lovingly yours,