Word I-Spy

Word books for kids? Given the choice between taking or leaving 'em, I use to leave them every time. We have a few for their pictures, or because Caroline became desperately attached in a book store and the alternative was Barney, but once they joined her bookcase, I avoided reading them as much as I could - no plot, no quick page turning, nothing to sing or rhyme, horrors!

Then C and I discovered word I-spy. Word I-spy works like this: we pick a page from a word book and I’ll say, "I-spy a word that starts with a 'b' and ends with a 'k'." Caroline, most slowly and dramatically, will swirl over the page with her pointer finger until she finds the word. "Aha! b, double o, k. Here it is!" If the word is short enough, she’s started sounding it out too, "Buh oo k, book!! Okay mommie, my turn - can you find a word that starts with the letter..."

We’ve played this game every night for the last week or so, extending it into the early evening now that I’m sentenced to rest half the day and can’t run around as much as usual. Besides the thrill of hearing Caroline figure out words, word I-spy is also a great game, and it has the unlooked for advantage of keeping a new book novel for much longer (a page or three a night? fantastic!).

Tonight we finally finished Maisy’s Amazing Big Book of Words. The last page was all about Bedtime. I closed it with a satisfied thwack and started contemplating our other word books, "Hm, Richard Scarry or that slightly wacky English/Czech dictionary, then there is the photo book of words..."

But the choice for tomorrow had already been made. As Will picked up C to carry her off to bed, she yelled over his shoulder as they passed through the doorway, "Night night Mommie, we’ll wake Maisy up first thing tomorrow!"