Yesterday Emma once again proved me wrong.
We dug out her Power Touch and discovered the battiers had died. I even checked the parental on/of switch on the back. Of course Emma knows it’s there. I told her that the batteries must be dead and we had to get new ones. Another child came in the room and as I repeated the tale of woe, Emma interrupted.
“No Mommy, the batteries are UNdead.” I guessed I missed something.
At any rate, considering the Power Touch unit holds an actual book with words and stuff, I suggested that we *pretend* the thing was working and just say the words ourselves. I didn’t get to be a mom this long without having a couple tricks up my sleeve. We flipped it open to the first page. Emma and I pointed to the words as she said, “Dora’s! River! Adventure! written! by! Karen! What’s that word Mommy?”
“van Damme”
“VanDamme! Illustrated! By! Susan! Hall!”
So we finished the title page and went through the first couple pages of the story, complete with activities. I had to do the voices and sing the song, plus she made it quite clear that I couldn’t just read the story in my lovely story-reading voice, I had to read it Just! like! the! voice! pronouncing each word singly unrelated to the words around it.
Hmm, I thought to myself, she can practically read. Maybe I should work on phonics and not just the odd letter-sound here and there. Maybe I should not have tossed the sight word flash cards. I angsted out loud to Ron over it.
“Go get me some paper,” he asked me. “Emma? Wanna play a game?”
Ron started writing short words on the paper, like at, up, no, most of which Emma read out backwards. Then she started, ‘Watch me, Mommy. What’s this word?” And she wrote out words. Bigger words she knew by sight. Ron met my gaze over Emma’s head. He was trying not to laugh.
“Fine!” I told him, “So you were right.”
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