Family Life

We were sitting at the dining table one day when Daniel exclaimed “Oomil!” By the tone of his voice, this was an exciting discovery. After a few questions, it turns out he had read it off the side of a cream carton sitting on the table. I turned the carton around and around, but there was nothing that even closely resembled oomil.

Daniel is learning to read. Typically he sounds out a word one letter at a time. If it’s a short word he’ll get it as he speaks out the last letter. If it’s a long word he might have to sound it out two or three times through. If it’s a tricky word (“through”, for example) he’ll need parental assistance and further explanation as to why the English language is so odd.

Debbie gives him spelling and pronunciation rules, and the amazing thing is that he remembers. He doesn’t need much prompting. On the other hand, his success depends on how much effort he’s willing to put into it. If he can’t be bothered, he’ll ask to be read to or will “read” something totally different to what’s actually written.

He’s also attempting the reverse: given a word, he’ll try to spell it. He’s often accurate, but slow. And sometimes humorous. “Daddy” becomes D-A-D-E. Dad-ee.

But back to the dinner-table mystery. It turns out that the cream carton was half a litre. What Daniel read as “oomil” was 500ml.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 12:09 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.