Spelling With Numbers

Since I don't see Olivia for large chunks of time when I am at work or rehearsing, she often surprises me by showing off skills and knowledge that she has gained while I've been absent. She actually surprised both Liz and I by suddenly singing along to "Blessed is the Spot". Of course we didn't teach her that directly, she learned by listening and then decided she wanted to join in.

There are other things, though, that would seem harder just to learn by osmosis--and one of those would be spelling. Yes, Olivia can say (or sing) the alphabet, which is a start. But memorizing letters and putting them together to make words are two different skill sets. A couple of weeks ago I spelled her name with blocks, but as far as I knew that was the extent of her spelling lessons. So last weekend I thought I would do some follow up. I suggested that we write her name.

So I begin, "The first letter is--" I am suddenly interrupted by Olivia who states emphatically,"O!" I am surprised, but not exactly astonished because during our wooden blocks lesson we had established that "O is for Olivia" and she had repeated that phrase since then. So I write an O on the paper. Then Olivia chimes in again: "L." Woa... you have got to be kidding me. I write down the L and then she speaks up again: "I." What!? How!? Who!? Why!? At this point I'm beyond astonished, and as I write the I on the paper I'm thinking that there's a chance she will actually spell her entire name with NO help. "T" she says. "Good!" I reply encouragingly, "It sounds a lot like T, but actually the letter is V," and I write the V down. "Now what comes next?" Olivia then proves that she is, indeed, an almost 2 year old: "Six!" I explain that six is actually a number and I write down the second I. And the last letter is . . ."Two!"

So there you have it. My daughter's name is spelled OLIT62. I later found out that Liz and Olivia had written out her name before, so the first three letters weren't so much of a shock. OLIT62 then decided to stop spelling and went to run around with her cousins.