Too clever by half

We had our annual review with the speech therapy team at Katherine’s school last Wednesday. She’s making triffic progress, still has some problems, but should be no problem for transition to Kindergarten in the Fall (not in speech, and certainly not in cognitive skills, ed level, social skills, physical skills, etc.). The teachers all love her, etc., etc., etc., and I’d say more but you’d accuse me of being prejudiced in the matter.

Her biggest problems right now stem from talking too quickly. Can’t imagine where she gets that from.

Anyhow, the speech teacher, Ms. Caroline, said she had to tell us the following story.

I wanted to go ahead and give her a formal speech inventory test before the meeting, so I had some objective scoring. So I sat down with her today and started going through the form with her.

At one point, when the word was “chair,” she pronounced it, “kair.” So I wrote a “K” down here in the form to indicate the nature of the mispronunciation.

She saw me do it, looked over, and said, “That’s a ‘K’.” I agreed, and she asked, “Why did you write that down?”

I told her that was the sound she had used to start the word, and she said, “No! I said kair!”

Ms. Caroline was amused because while some preschoolers have a vague interest in what it is she’s writing, few of them take it any further and try to (or recognize they need to) correct her. (She also took it as proof that Katherine knows the right sound to hear it, and knows that the the word/sound doesn’t start with “K,” but still can’t pronounce it quite.)

Upshot is that she’s going to start keeping her test materials, even for preschoolers, on a clip board so that they aren’t, uh, distracted by her note taking. She’s had to do this for kids at higher levels, but not for pre-K before.

Our little girl: pushing the envelope.

(Posted by CronDave)