Word World

For probably the last 9 months, Bennett has been obsessed with the show Dora the Explorer, and she would get to watch 1 episode everyday after lunch (if she had eaten a good lunch). Lately, she has shifted gears to a show called Word World. Bennett has been really excited about trying to decode words recently (and of course I'm encouraging her with my love of teaching early literacy!). She knows all of the sounds that the letters make, and she loves to think of words that go along with each letter. Word World has taken this all to a new level for her. For those of you who aren't familiar with the show, it's a cute kids show that tells a little story, but all throughout they are secretly teaching literacy. Also, all of the characters and surrounding scenery are made out of their letters. For example, the sheep is drawn out of the letters S-H-E-E-P. It's pretty adorable. Whenever they need to create something new in the show, they "build a word" by finding the letters for that item, then by pushing the letters together, the item forms. In today's episode, they were teaching the beginning blend "st." One of the items they built was a stage.

After the episode was over, Bennett asked me if I could help her build a stage. I was busy changing Miles's diaper, so I told her I would help her in a minute, having no idea how she thought the two of us were going to accomplish this task of building a stage. She disappeared and came back a few minutes later. She had gotten an "s" out of our "Janosky" name stool, and a "t" out of her "Bennett" name stool, and brought them in to me. She asked me, "now can you help me build a stage?" I asked her how we were going to do it. She promptly put the "s" and "t" down on the ground and said, "Mom, all we have to do is push the letters together to build a word and we'll have a stage!" I thought it was so cute, but then we had to have a talk about how Word World is a magical place where that works, but we can't really just push letters together to build things! I thought it was so creative and I was proud of her for remembering the blend!

Now that I can't be at her every beck and call, Bennett has become much more resourceful these days. Just recently, she has decided to carry her stool around with her everywhere to do things by herself: turn on/off light switches, get up on our kitchen stools, check on Miles in his crib, watch and help while I change his diaper, etc. She's really embracing being a big sister and my helper too, and I couldn't be happier about it!

And just because I can't post a blog without at least one picture of at least one of my children, here is an adorable picture of Brandon and Miles having a "bonding moment" the other night...