Are You A Cow?

I have been trying quite hard to get the girls saying their ABCs. Much to my disappointment, we can't get past C. Neither girl will spell her name despite many renditions of songs where we sing the spelling out. Lia tries to write her name (lots of scribbles, and almost some resemblance of 1-1 correspondence, but no where near forming letters). Zadie can recognize a Z but gets very upset if I try to write her name instead of drawing pictures for her. All this to say, I've kind of given up on any sort of direct teaching of the skills that help kids read. 

Last week I was reading Sandra Boynton's "Are You a Cow?" to the girls. Zadie had hopped off my lap, I got distracted with something else, and Lia stayed on my lap flipping the pages. (She can stare at pages in a book longer than most 2nd graders I know--she's fascinated by something). A few minutes later I hear her jabbering away and tune in just long enough to catch her saying "Dog? No. Lamb? No...." (The exact words are "are you a dog? No.. etc). By the time we got the video going you can only hear her do two pages worth: "duck? No. Frog? (Which sounds like a very bad word) No." I tried helping her with page turning, but we're quite independent right now, so she won't take my help. She later on got caught up on the page with the hippo because the phrasing changes up there and she couldn't handle it. Anyway, it fascinated me that she was actually reading a book that fit her little 2-word-sentence language development. Looks like she won't be relying too heavily on phonics to get going. 

In the meantime, Z pulls out a Jamba Juice gift card from Kyle's wallet and says, Jamba Juice. I think we have baby geniuses on our hands.