Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Ella, Wow!

About a month ago Nanny C. gave Ella a treasury of fairy tales called Once Upon a Time. The book is awesome... it contains almost every fairytale I've ever heard and several I'd never had the pleasure of reading before. At bedtime each night we've been making our way through the book two stories at a time.

The lessons they contain are really sinking in... well, sort of. One day this week I took Ella to her room and requested that she stay in there until she could be sweet because she was taking toys from the girls and hoarding them. I told her to just come on out when she was ready. A few minutes later she came out, apologized to Maggie for snatching a toy away, and said, "Mama, I was feeling kinda selfish in there all by myself.... like the Lonely Giant."

Mimi told me just today that she had recently been corrected by Ella for improvising when reading her stories from this book instead of reading word for word. In Mom's defense, she said she was only changing things when she thought the words were too difficult for Ella to understand. Who knew she was capable of taking it all in and making sense of it with context?!?

Because fairy tales are written differently from the way we talk now, Ella's daily use of language has changed. An example was today when I told her that she couldn't put my makeup on after she had her bath she said, "I am sad, and then I began to cry." I almost laughed out loud!

Her favorite story in the book is The Ugly Duckling. I am certain that it is her favorite because we've had to read it every other night since we've been home from Spain and maybe even before we left. I've heard her throughout the day reciting parts of it to her baby sisters and baby dolls. Tonight my voice was beginning to give out by the time we got to the second story because I now have the cold that the girls have been sharing for a week. I flipped open to the Ugly Duckling, and to my surprise Ella began reciting the following, word for word from the book: "One shine summer day, a mother goose watched her eggs begin to hatch. "You are the sweetest little yellow duck-ings!" she cried pwoudly. "Are you all here?"But the biggest egg had not yet hatched. The mother duck settled back down on the final egg and waited. After a time, that shell, too, began to cwack. And out tumbled a cwumsy gray duck-ing." From that point on, I read a little and she filled in as needed.

All I can say is, "Wow"!

1 comments:

Kelli said...

"Wow" is right! way to go Ella!

Can't wait till our trio starts doing those things :)

Kelli