Parker the Scientist

At Parker's teacher/parent conference her teachers said they thought she'd be either a lawyer or author for her love of debate (which she logically debates more than most adults at times) and language.  Yesterday I was sleeping in and was slowly awaken by talking.  I open my eyes to see Parker reading a 2nd grade level book sounding out each word as she went.  Her teachers said they found her hiding out writing 5 -6 word sentences (which wasn't her assigned work, because they hadn't even introduced that yet).   It just seems like her verbal and written language has exploded over night.

Yesterday she ignored video games, movies, and food.  Instead she buried herself in her science books and shark books, copying anatomical studies and words.   She created her own book.   She titled it "The Science of Sharks", and she wants to add the "whole shark skeleton" today she said.

Here is the Blacktip Shark and Mako Shark.  The next step in her language is trying to get her to work on lower-case letters.  She's been active in inventive spelling, and it's just sown the seeds of discovery for her.  Parker is able to work her mind around language and sounds at a such a faster rate due to the inventive spelling (you let them mess up, as long as they are sounding it out and writing letters that represent those sounds like "blubrry" for blueberry, "sokkr" for soccer, etc.)  When forced to be correct and do sight words constantly, Parker wasn't nearly as engaged in the process.