My Little Lexicons

I spent just a little time in Tulip's preschool this week.  It's C week, and during a story one little girl kept shouting out to her teacher, "I know what starts with C - seaweed!"  I mean, seriously, read that out loud.  That was so funny.  She must have hollered it out four times; she was so excited at her discovery.  I totally giggled.  I would be a bad preschool teacher.  I would bust a gut everyday at stuff like that.

Wolfie spelled all of his spelling pre-test words correctly so he gets a "challenge" list this week.  He was so proud of himself.  But get this, his challenge list is totally challenging.  Here are his words (mind you, he is in first grade):

• humor
• humorous
• amuse
• amusement
• funny
• hilarious

Can you believe it?!  Tough, right?  But, these are terrific words for him because we use many of them regularly.

As we drove to Grandma's house, we were trying out his new challenge words.  I like teaching my children about words, and I pointed out that you spell the "ous" sound at the end of a word with three special letters: o-u-s

I asked him which two words ended in -ous.  He answered with "humorous" and "hilarious" of course.  Then I started to ask him if he could think of any other words that end in -ous.  I was thinking too.  Okay, I admit that was a bit much for him to wrap his head around.  I mean, what did I expect him to say?  Porous?  Glamorous?

But Tulip chimed in, for sure.  "Bus!' she hollers.  Then after a few moments, "Toys R Us!"