"Tearipifymome"

No, you're not seeing things. You have probably never heard of the word "tearipifymome" because it wasn't a word until this afternoon, when the sweet girl and I invented it.

We were playing with refrigerator magnets, and it started out as a quick phonics lesson in the middle of dinner-time preparations. "T" followed by "E" -- "what word does that make?" my daughter asked. I explained that it didn't make a word exactly, but that we could still sound it out and see what sounds the letters made together. So we did. Then I added an "a" to make the word "tea" (she loves to drink tea) and an "r" to show her how to make the word "tear." And the next thing I knew she was pulling letters at random, adding them to the end, and asking "what does it sound like now?" Before you could blink, we'd built a long, skinny bridge of letters more than half-way across the refrigerator and we both had the giggles.

And we ended up with a humdinger: "tearipifymome." I'm pronouncing it thus: "tear-ih-PIF-ee--mohme."

My dear husband got a big kick out of this when he got home. We told him we'd made up a word, and sweet girl kept repeating it with great gusto (and more giggles!). But I confessed we'd not yet decided what our new word should mean. D. decided it sounded like a poetic device. As in: "if you can use tearipifymome, you can write good poetry." Hmmm. Maybe so.

I sure hope I'm not mixing up sweet girl too much before we get to official reading lessons. :-) Which, I might add, I'm hoping to start trying soon. I've just about decided on using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I've been trying to establish a light-moderate homemade homeschooling curriculum to use in conjunction with her two days of preschool per week this fall. I know my time will be extremely limited, given the fact that I'm still having to work mornings and I'm also teaching online again for the seminary. But I'm still getting excited about schooling possibilities and want to do what I can (without making any of us too crazy).