Nibbles has a Friday spelling test, so we’ve spent a few days rehearsing…
Tuesday (teatime)
Me: spell CUP
Nibbles: Cuh Oo Puh
Me: lovely
The first eight go brilliantly, all correct, yippee, I think I have adopted a genius and swell with impossible smugness. Oh how the mighty are about to fall…
Me: Spell STEM
Nibbles: Suh Duh …
Me: Not Duh, listen again, STem
Nibbles: Suh Duh
Me: No words in the English language start with a Suh Duh (too much information here, I know), try again STTTTem
Nibbles: Suh Duh
Me: It’s Suh Tuh
Nibbles: Suh Tuh Eh Mmm
Me: Well done! Great. High Five! We Got There.
Tuesday bathtime
Me: let’s spell those two tricky words using the bath letters
Nibbles (see photo)
Me *sighs* It’s not a Duh… Try again
Nibbles: WHY?
Nibbles: this is boring
Nibbles: it’s tooooo hard!!!!!
Thursday
Andy comes home and works on his spellings.
As with Nibbles’ conviction that STEM is spelt SDEM, with QUIZ, he is determined that it starts CW and any form of correction seems doomed to failure.
Andy’s patience is sorely tested, but we think Nibbles has deleted the SDEM and CWIZ spellings in his brain and installed the new (correct) versions.
Friday (on the school walk)
By now, I am confident that all this work we have put in will be paying off…
Me: Nibbles, let’s just do those two final spellings, how do we spell STEM?
Nibbles: Suh Duh
Me (silently) ARGGHHHH
Me (out loud): not Duh, can you think what else it might be?
Nibbles: it’s tricky
Me (silently) I can tell
We try again..
Nibbles: Suh Duh
Me: not Duh
Nibbles: Suh Duh
I lose the will to live and make my hands into a letter T (he guesses correctly given the MAHOOSIVE clue that is inches from his face). I then trace the entire spelling one letter at a time onto his hand, so that every possible mode of learning has been covered.
We spell out again, together, then him on his own and I think he finally has it nailed.
Me: one more time, just to check, how do we spell STEM?
Nibbles: Suh Duh
He will not stand down from the D position.
And part of me admires his determination to stick to his original idea.
