Isaac learned syllables on the way to church this morning.
Don’t ask me how the topic came up. I was driving.
At first he didn’t get it. How do these words get broken down? Why are we doing this.
About ten minutes into the fifteen minute drive I heard it click. Suddenly it was a game.
“How many syllables are in Gabriel?” We asked.
Isaac claps one-two-three as the intones his brother’s name.
“Three!”
This went on for the rest of the trip.
On the way home we managed to confuse him.
“Cat is one syllable, how many are in ‘cats’?”
“Two,” says Isaac confidently. “Cat and s.”
It took the entire rest of the car ride to convince him that adding an ‘s’ doesn’t actually add a syllable. Neither Carol nor I could really come up with a good reason why.
We try not to push him too hard, but we know what we want to teach Isaac next.
Haiku.
