Genius.

Yesterday I wrote about our adjective lesson with pumpkins. One of the sprouts I visited to help with his descriptive word was Billy. As I squatted down next to Billy’s seat, I glanced at his pumpkin… it was a big ol’ mess of a scribbles, so I wasn’t quite sure how he was going to describe his pumpkin.

“Billy, what adjective do you want to write for your pumpkin?” I asked.

He looked at the picture and then back at me.

“Scary,” he replied.

I couldn’t agree more.

“All right, ‘scary’ – What sound do you hear at the beginning?” I prodded.

“/S/, /S/, ‘Snake,’” he said as he wrote the letter S. We’ve been chanting the sounds every day (sometimes more than once) and most children can identify a sound and write the corresponding letter without naming it – amazing.

We continued with each sound in ‘scary’ until the final one.

“Scar-EE,” I said, emphasizing the last sound.

“What sound do you hear?” I asked, fully expecting Billy to write the letter E.

He wrote a Y.

“Wow, you know it actually is a Y, but in this word it makes the /E/ sound, how did you know that?” I wondered.

“It’s just like the Y at the end of my name,” Billy replied as if it were as plain as the nose on my face.

I got chills when he said that. I called Mrs. D. over and had him explain it to him. I then looked up at her and said, “Genius.” She nodded in aggrement.