A spelling lesson from John Paul

John Paul recently became VERY interested in spelling.  I showed him a Lego that had the word "Dinoco" on it (from a Toy Story set), spelled each letter separately, and told him it spelled "Dinoco."  For a while he would carry that Lego out, often pointing out each letter separately, "Bells...  Dinoco!"

Then it occurred to him that if THIS sequence of letters spelled something, maybe OTHER letters also spelled something!  This went very well for many things, such as the body parts on his toy puppy ("T-U-M-M-Y bells...  Tummy!"), but has been rather confused for things with the brand names plastered across them.  For instance, "G-R-A-C-O" spells both high chair AND carseat.  And "C-O-M-B-I" spells stroller. 

One of my favorites happened a couple of days ago.  We were driving past a construction site and John Paul very excitedly exclaimed, "DIGGER!!!  C-A-T bells DIGGER!"  It was a Caterpillar brand digger, and he was very proud of himself for being able to "spell" the word.  Then we came home and he found his toy front-end loader, which is also Caterpillar brand.  "C-A-T bells fwunt END noder!"  Nope. 

I've tried to correct him, but now he's just hopping around yelling, "C-A-T BELLS DIGGER!  C-A-T BELLS FWUNT END NODER!  C-A-T BELLS BABY CEE-YAH!"

He has a little fridge phonics toy that helps spell 3-letter words.  Mostly he spells things like "CZP" or "MNF" but it plays an encouraging song each time so he keeps trying.  He got VERY excited the other day, holding two letters and a puzzle piece.  He hopped around the living room shouting, "Less build a word!  Less build it, less build it now!"  The word?  b [bulldozer puzzle piece] d.  Yup, he's a genius.
One of these days he'll get it, but I'm totally getting a kick out of the mistakes inherent to the learning process.