Can You Read 4-glish?

Something I *LOVE* about my boy is his creativity. He has an imagination like you wouldn't believe. There are times when he'll have a handful of legos, a toothbrush and kleenex box and for the next 2 hours he's deep into an elaborate story of rocket ships, caves and heroes. When we put him to bed at night, he always asks for an "invisible" story... which means a story that we make up (not from a book). In the past couple of months he's started to direct these stories and tell us how the story goes.

He has also found a great game on PBS kids called "Dot's Story Factory" where he can draw pictures and then type captions about it. He loves to write his stories all by himself then have us read what he has written. I get a huge kick out of reading Austin's version of English. It actually makes sense in a way! Let's see if you can translate 4-year-old phonetics...

"Austin Johnson [age] 4. [To] Heidi."

"The monster ate Dot and Dash. Then Austin and Ruth flew in the box with wings."

"Add that recycled newspaper in to jugs."

*This one was spelled correctly!*

"They were using." [Explanation: Using a treasure map to get to the green 'X'.]

"Austin Johnson and his favorite color."

"And he has a favorite blanket."

"His favorite color is green."