Can

Many, many, many years ago when I was learning to read I had a word bear. It's arms and legs were full of words and you had to tick them off when you could read them. My whole class had finished their word bear and I hadn't because there was one word I couldn't read. This words was "can". Apparently the word would come up and I would read "say" or "dog" or "actually". It frustrated my mum immensely! I mean come on can is such and easy word to read you can even sound it out! I don't know why I couldn't read it I just know it made a HUGE impact on my mothers life. She would spend hours reading with me to get me to read correctly that one word! I don't know maybe when you are the first middle child in four you do anything for some attention because it seems such an easy word to read now. I personally don't remember not being able to read "can" but I do remember that word bear. Funnily enough, not so long ago my Mum gave me all of the special things she had collected over the years and the boys and I love to got through them ever so often. We have compared my first kindy painting to that of Ryan and Matthew and no doubt we will do it with Ben's. But I am sidetracked! My Mum gave me everything BUT that word bear! She couldn't part with it because it reflected all that hard work she had put in to me.
Anyway fast forward twenty something years and there is me sitting on my bed with some readers for Matthew called.......... Cans! (Nathan was really excited i had got Matthew a reader about boobs by the way!) The story is about a cat who finds his cat food in a can. Anyway we start with the heading.... Cans and Matthew says I don't know that work Mum. So I say "Sound it out Buddy" and he says "Cat" (there is a picture of a cat on the cover). I say no Buddy start with the first letter so he says " C...C....C...Catfood". I say "No Buddy it was a C but after that it is an A...A....A...! Lets look at the letters and sound it out! So he looks again and says no I really don't know that word!"
This isn't the first time my history has been repeated. My mother would take great delight in what happens on a daily basis in this house!