Mabel Molanphy

I teared up today when Mabel brought me one of her por­traits. She’s been doing this, of course, for near­ly 2 1/2 years. She’s always loved to draw, espe­cial­ly peo­ple. Recent­ly, she dis­cov­ered envelopes and scotch tape…easy to see where this is going. She’s been writ­ing names with our help for a long time, and mail­ing address­es to grand­ma and grand­pa, etc. But, today…TODAY! She wrote a name all by her­self, and it was RIGHT. She wrote “momu.” Which, *obvi­ous­ly* is “mama.”

We taught Mabel to learn her sounds pho­net­i­cal­ly. So, to Mabel, it is m (mon­ster), o (octo­pus), m (mon­ster), u (umbrel­la). Pho­net­i­cal­ly? She wrote mama. I’ve nev­er been so hap­py. And I’ve offi­cial­ly changed my name. Only in writ­ing terms, of course. Because, really…the spelling of “mama” real­ly does­n’t make any sense. It took a 4 year old to prove that “momu” makes pho­net­ic sense.

The Cal­i­for­nia Street has a mega Whole Foods, with the bot­tom-lev­el ded­i­cat­ed to park­ing and a cafe. After Mabel pulled the wag­on (a bas­ket with a long han­dle) and did all our shop­ping (I have arrived!!), loaded it all onto the con­vey­or belt, had a love­ly chat with the cashier (only fail: I still paid), she want­ed a treat at the cafe on the way out. She was hap­pi­er with her giant chunk of water­mel­on than any kid with a cook­ie. In true Mabel-fash­ion, she ser­e­nad­ed every­one at the cafe with a song about how much she loved her water­mel­on, while sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly gorg­ing it. Thank­ful­ly she’s cute, and every­one kept smil­ing and walk­ing by telling me awe­some she was. It can get ugly at the Whole Foods when you bring you kid along…

In Montes­sori edu­ca­tion, the child learns to write (encode) before they read (decode). It’s kind of fun­ny, because they can write, but can’t read what they have writ­ten. As they learn to read, they quick­ly back-track and learn spelling. It’s real­ly quite mag­i­cal. Part of the writ­ing is using the “move­able alpha­bet,” tru­ly one of the awe­somest mate­ri­als. After Mabel learned her pho­net­ic pro­nun­ci­a­tion of all her sounds (includ­ing dou­ble let­ters like “sh” “ee” “ai”, etc), she gets to use the move­able alpha­bet to express her thoughts. Or find tiny objects and spell them out. This was her very first intro­duc­tion to the mate­r­i­al, and the words she spelled.