Foamy Fun

A couple of years ago at a Do-Re-Mi & You party, I bought some bath foam and put it in Maggie's Christmas stocking. She hated it ... didn't want the foam touching her and was scared of it floating in the water toward her. I put the foam in the linen closet with her other toiletries and sort of forgot about it until I was going through the closet recently and rediscovered it.

She still doesn't like it on her, but in my determination not to completely waste it, I've found a new use for it -- shower writing! It squirts out just like shaving cream, and whenever Maggie's in the shower with me, I've been using it to write words on the shower door (our shower has a clear glass door). She loves it! I'll write a word, and she likes to trace through each letter with her finger before totally smearing the foam everywhere. She rinses it off with the shower squirter, and I write a new one. I figure it's good practice at identifying letters, practicing how they're written, and seeing how they're put together to form words.

Fast forward to last night. We were in the shower, filthy after a fun day of playing outside. (Well, she played while I pressure-washed the screened porch deck and back patio.) Anyway, in the shower, she made her usual request to do foam letters and asked me to write a couple of specific words. I can't remember what they were, but her favorites are Mommy, Daddy, and Maggie. I complied then tried a new game. I'd write a word, and she tried to figure it out. She's gotten pretty good at sounding out three-letter, vowel-in-the-middle words like rat, big, sun, etc. We did a few of these, and then I tried to make it more challenging. I wrote the word "TRY," and sure enough, she said "tuh ... rrr ... why." And then, "tuh - r- eye" and then "try." It only took her three tries (no pun intended) to figure it out and get the correct word! This was a word she's never spelled on her own before, nor has she ever asked me to spell before.

Next we did "ASK" ... still sticking with three-letter words but changing up the location of the vowel. She sounded this one out: "aaa ... ssss... kuh" a couple of times and pronounced the final word: askuh (two syllables). It was so close to the correct way ... take away that extra syllable on the end and she had it! She's really starting to read! Don't get me wrong ... she's nowhere near being able to read a complete story -- or even a full page within a story -- and she still goofs off as much as she's serious about it, but she's definitely figured out that the letters represent sounds, and the sounds come together to form words. Since one of my degrees is in English, I'm thrilled that she seems to have inherited one of my talents/interests.

I'm also trying to figure out how to continue our game when the bath foam runs out. I'm hoping shaving cream will work just as well -- and it's probably a lot cheaper too!