Exclamation (Re)Mark

Today I was sitting in the school room and Henry was running through the kitchen barefoot.  Apparently he slipped on the portion of his too-long pants that was drooping down under his little fat feet and fell over backwards.  I heard the “whump” but before I had time to worry or run to assess the damage, Henry yelled out “Oh NO!” and then started crying.  Putting it here in type doesn’t do justice to the humor of the expression in his voice, so I’ll just have to try and describe it for you.  Imagine how you would say “Oh NO!” (emphasis on the “NO”)  if you realized that you just locked your keys in the car … or if you forgot the oven and let dinner burn … or if your plan for running speedily across the kitchen was spoiled by an undignified cartoon-character-esque backflip.  I promise I didn’t let him see me laughing as I comforted him and wiped away his tears.

Language Skills

We’ve been working with Robyn on her pronunciation.  This morning, she had a baby girl doll in a little box that she was using as a bed.  She said, “He is named baby Robyn.”  I knew that Robyn wasn’t having a difficulty distinguishing between masculine and feminine personal pronouns.  Rather the error was due to her difficulty with the “s” and “sh” sounds which she often just replaces with a flat “h” sound.  We worked together on the sound and on adding it to the front of the word, and finally she got to all blended together successfully.  In triumph, she announced, “I am going to take SHHHHeee downstairs.”  Oh well.  A lesson on subject and object pronouns another day. J