halloween and spelling

Here's Sam Friday evening in his lion costume, in his preschool room at the end of the day. A bunch of the kids went out trick-or-treating together in a neighborhood close by the school that goes all-out (closing streets off, major decorating efforts, etc). So they had a quick dinner at school then got dressed. J. took him; I went home to hand out candy (and escape the mayhem).



On Saturday we had friends (J's postdoc and his wife) over for dinner. While we were talking after dinner, Sam was laboriously sounding out the spelling of a long and complicated word on his (3-letter-space) "word whammer" toy (a gift that's been unfortunately compelling him to make all words 3 letters long). He ran into the dining room excitedly to show it to us: ZLF. "I spelled xylophone!" he exclaimed with such pride that, really, how could we tell him he was wrong? Also, if he were writing in Hebrew, he'd be pretty close to correct (what with the optional vowels).