Sunday, August 23, 2009

the hood, the lad, and the jugly

a.k.a....when rhyming goes awry.


Quick story. I love the phase in learning that has children rhyming all the time. It's fun. It teaches phonetic rules. It reinforces letter sounds. My girls and I rhyme things all the time. In fact sometimes we have contests to see who can come up with the most real words that rhyme. Oh sure, it's easy to rhyme things if you don't have to worry about the words being actual words so I try to keep it real. Most of the time it works out great, but there are times when fake words are disputed, for example zip, sip, lip, dip, hip, ...bip? Wait a minute, bip isn't a word. Well, it is if you're a robot. Hmmmm. Anyway, even when we're not playing the game I can hear the girls spouting off lists of rhyming words while they're playing with the doll house, playing with the cat, or swinging on the monkey bars. Sooner or later things are bound to take a turn for the worst.

So my little one, she's 4 years old, was playing with Shadow...our kitty. It went something like...Oh what a good kitty...a pretty kitty...an itty bitty kitty...a **itty kitty. Aaack! Let's not say that one....change subject, distract, hope that doesn't happen again. Then there's my big girl, she's 6 years old, and a master of rhyming. She and her grandfather were playing with puppets. More specifically a cute, yellow, quacking duck. Need I say more? There aren't many words to fit that one and as they made a rhyme about the duck she tried to help out with a name for him. Oh my ears...the shock! the horror! How can such words come from such sweet innocent girls?

Just look at them. So sweet and innocent. I know they've never heard those words in my house. Well, unless you count the time when we had our windows opened and the neighbor was standing outside in his yard arguing with his daughter. I guess we'll just chalk it up to a most unfortunate rhyming incident. Sheesh!

3 comments:

Adrienne said...

Oh my ... a mother's greatest fear! I hate to laugh at your pain but that is hysterical - I'm sure my time it to come. Poor girls - they had no idea!

Love your new header.

Rebekah said...

heehee :)

I remember the time I did this same thing, and said a word in rhyming that my mother sharply informed me I should never say... I was so confused, and never forgot the word, because I didn't even realize it was a word anyway. Of course, when I was older and figured out what it meant, I was as shocked as my mother that it had come out of my little mouth :D

Anonymous said...

Oh, Me!! It happened often when I was teaching. They are innocent and beautiful. Love Big G