Pillow!

McKinley is in kindergarten at home, which means a lot of playing and some learning of numbers and letters.  I really do think she's doing well; she knows all of her letters and the sounds that they make, so we've moved on to learning to read.  

We start with a vowel sound, like short "e."  Then we add a consonant sound at the end, like "e-t." then we add consonants at the beginning, like "w-e-t" and "l-e-t" and "s-e-t" and "m-e-t." We keep repeating until the pattern becomes very familiar; then we switch out the letters at the front and back to make new words.  It's fun!  And she was doing great with this particular lesson, shouting out words as she recognized them.

We switched to the combination "e-d," and had words like "r-e-d" and "f-e-d" and "l-e-d".... and then we got to this combination:

...and she was stumped.  "b" and "d" can be very confusing for while, it is often hard for kids to remember which one makes which sound.  So despite the fact that we had already been practicing words with the "e-d" ending, this word stopped her in her tracks.  I tried to help by giving her a hint; "You lay on this every night when you go to sleep...?"  Her eyes lit up with understanding and she shouted,
"PILLOW!"
LOL.  No, not pillow.  But pretty close, we'll work on it another day! :)