Homo...what?

How much structure does a 5 year old need and what is considered to be age appropriate? The other day in the library I came across a book "What your first grader needs to know" and looked through it. The minimum standard does not seem to be a lot. We have covered a lot of topics with the girls just by reading books, some topics we have not came across just yet. But I do not see the reason fro worrying or trying to "catch up". They will know the names of the constellation eventually, or who Vasco da Gama was, and so on. I do try to expose them to as much information as possible, to see what interests them and takes on their attention, what makes them to be passionate and excited. Because when I see their eyes light up, I know that's when the learning is happening.

I haven't talked to Ivana about vowels and consonants (maybe I should, though), or as a matter of fact about many other rules that are believed to help your child learn to read. But what I'm trying to do is to pay close attention to the discoveries and observations that she is making on her own and then "feed the fire".

The other day Ivana wanted to write a thank you letter to her cousins for coming over and bringing a yummy chocolate cake. I love when she initiates something like that, because then I look at this time of her sitting down to write as the moment to apply her knowledge she had acquired to something meaningful, rather then doing tedious writing exercises from a work book.

So she started commenting on some words from her letter, like"wood" and "would", or 'dear" and "deer", how they sound the same but are spelled differently. And today I decided to introduce her to a new word "homophones" and came up with a longer list of these kind of words. We sat down on a sofa, and while I was nursing Milana kind of "worked with" the list. There was no need for me to explain to Ivana as she had made a discovery a day before all by herself. We came up with different sentences, she practised writing them. We had fun and she was excited to see so many words that can be a bit tricky, as I call them, that's when Tata came home she was very eager to teach him about the homophones.

And Mirek's reaction was , "Homo...what was that?"

Now... I'm sure the term "homophones" will not stick around in her little head for a long time, but I have made sure she had gotten that "extra serving of baby spinach salad when her body was craving iron", if I might use that kind of metaphor... I just satisfied her natural curiosity.