Going to bed on a happier note.

[rivka]

I should be in bed, but first I have to post about something happy to lift my spirits.

Alex decided to write a book this evening.

She took a sheaf of printer paper, folded it in half, and asked me to staple it to make a book. She decided that it would be for her friend Allie, so she wrote Allie's name on the cover. (She can do that without my help.)



I went upstairs to the bathroom, promising to help her with spelling when I returned. When I came back I found that she had already gotten started. She informed me that the thing on top was "just a picture."



"And what do the letters say?"

"Can you read them to me?" she asked.

I sounded them out for her. "En-am-lee."

"Enamle." She nodded. "That's a psychologist I know."

She dictated the next page and I told her how to spell the words.



"Why don't you draw a picture of her?" I suggested.

"I don't know what she looks like." She thought for a moment. "Actually, I do know. She's square. She's a robot." She drew a dead robot.

Next page: "And I was sad." I helped with spelling again.



Next page. "I want to trace a puzzle piece. [...] I'm writing my name."



"Is your story done?"

"No." She turned the page. "I was very, very happy."

"You were happy?"

"The day after she died, I was very, very happy. Because she was a very, very, very bad psychologist."



At school, when they're learning to write letters the teachers give them dotted lines to trace. Alex drew her own dotted lines for some of the letters.

I was trying to be totally hands-off, but I couldn't stand not giving one little piece of literary criticism. "Do you think maybe you should say why you were happy that she died? So people who read the story will understand?"

Again with my spelling help, Alex wrote: "She was bad." The things that look like mistaken letter forms are really, I am told, pictures of kitties.



That's my girl.

Comments

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

Do you complain about other, bad psychologists at home? I wonder where she came up with that particular character.

Many of my kiddo's stories involve some sort of tragedy happening to the dog. There was one cautionary tale where the dog jumped out of the car window and got squashed like a grape. (The illustration of the squashed dog did look rather like a smashed bug.) But after a while, he was better, and he will always listen to mama and daddy now, and won't jump out of any more windows.

Does Alex write letters to people she knows? E will ask to write letters to one particular friend in town (he dictates, I write, he signs and sometimes illustrates), and will always include stickers as a token of his esteem. He also likes writing cards to my parents.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Do you complain about other, bad psychologists at home? I wonder where she came up with that particular character.

I don't, no, but she's enamored of bad guys in general so I figure that's where it came from. This morning she added the extra detail that she was bad because she hit other psychologists.

So I asked her what a psychologist is. Apparently it's someone who digs up dinosaurs, except that Alex also knows the kind of psychologist who explores bugs. ;-)

[redbird]

So, does she think you dig up dinosaurs, or explore bugs?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hmm. So "psychologist" = "scientist", maybe?