"What spells this?"

I have determined that it is physically impossible for Tasha to be still unless she is sound asleep. Even then, as Bill will attest, she is not always as still as one would hope. It is agonizing to try to sit at the dinner table with her bopping up and down (restaurant seats are ideal for this), leaving to get something, putting her feet all over the place (including her sister), and standing on her chair to reach something that she needs. I love the energy she has, but it just wears me out sometimes to watch her.

Car rides are no exception to this sitting still rule. As a result, Tasha has come up with some of her own games to play in the car: "The knock-knock game" where we all take turns telling ridiculously lame jokes; "The raise your hand game" where we all take turns asking people to raise their hand if...(you have on blue, like dogs, etc.); "hide and seek" (I have no idea how they play this one, but it creates a boat load of giggles; and "The Spelling game". Again, this is my 4-year old making up these games to keep herself occupied, but they do require the willing participation of the other occupants of the vehicle. Sometimes, at 8 in the morning, I just don't have the energy. Today, at 11, I did. This was the result...

When you play "The Spelling Game" you each take turns spelling words and the other one tries to guess what you have spelled. Lately Tasha has enjoyed inventing words and using her Leap Pad to spell them out. The Leap Pad is helpful to me because I can tell her that the word needs a vowel and that the vowels are all the red letters. Boy, Leap was really thinking on that one! It is just plain hilarious when Tasha pipes up and says, "what spells this?" I don't know where she gets some of her expressions but she cracks me up. Today she asked me how to spell ball. We went through the letters, she punched them out on the pad, and then she tried to make another word. D-A-L. Well, without the extra L it doesn't really rhyme with ball now does it? But with the extra L then it sounds exactly like DOLL. What the heck?! ALL BALL CALL (DOLL) FALL HALL MALL (PAUL) STALL TALL WALL. Try to explain that one to a preschooler. I have no idea if she was trying to spell DOLL to rhyme with BALL or not, but I do know that she discovered that KIM rhymes with TIM. Who is this child?! Kyra had such a different approach to learning that Tasha is throwing me for a loop. At least this loop is a fun one that I can keep up with!