geniuses and other miscellany

My 4 year old blew my mind the other day. She can normally be found with paper, pen and/or scissors in hand at any given moment, and is always drawing, "writing", scribbling, etc. She knows the alphabet, and how to write and recognize a couple of letters (C, L, E, O, X). She can write our dogs name, Coco, and I was fairly impressed with that since I haven't really worked with her at all to teach her even that much.
So, imagine my surprise when she walked up to me and said "Look, Mom! It says Hallie!" (a friend's name), and on the paper she had written "HLE". That pretty much does say Hallie, if you knew the letters that go with those sounds. Which I had no idea she knew! Just really really surprised that she came up with that one on her own. And I know she did, because I didn't help her and nobody else was home at the time. If I worked with her I could easily have her reading before she starts K in the fall of '08. What a smartie!

At the moment my children are slaving away in various parts of the house while I sit here drinking coffee and playing on the computer. Gotta love that! When their chores are done they are going for a hike on the River's Edge Trail with their dad, and I'm going to stay home alone to do laundry and scrap. Perfect!