Katie Anne the Writer!

This morning, Katie Anne woke up bright and early... as in 5:15 am early.  SJ woke up and was crying loud and proud, and he woke KA up.  So, this made for a challenging morning for us since Saunders and I hadn't even had our showers yet - and all four of us were wide awake!

To keep Katie Anne occupied while we got ready for work, she watched two episodes of Arthur, but then she got bored and wanted something else to do.  She was supposed to draw a picture of weather as her homework for school this week, so I suggested that she draw a picture of the weather to fill the time.  She was excited to do it, but she wanted to go in the living room and color.  So, she headed into the other room while we got ready for work.

About 20 minutes later, Katie Anne came back into the bathroom and announced, "Okay, I'm done with my picture!  I drew our house in the rain."  She showed me this picture:

Very nice drawing of our house ... happy sunshine ... one lonely cloud sprinkling rain on our house ... two neighbor houses ... and her name at the bottom!

I was shocked that she'd written her name - but I just assumed right away that she'd copied it from somewhere.  She's been good at copying letters for awhile, although we have not worked on writing any particular thing.  Whenever she's written something, I usually write the letters (sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once), and she looks at the letters and then writes them on her own.  Other times, I write the letters with a pencil or pen, and then she traces with a marker or crayon.  Apart from copying her name on a few cards, we haven't really worked on writing her name.  In fact, the last time I even asked her to write her name was on September 13 (thank goodness for blogs to help you remember specifics!), and she just copied letters that I'd written with a pen...

At that point, Katie Anne couldn't even spell her name on her own. 

So, I asked her where she'd copied her name from, and she said, "I didn't copy it.  I just wrote it."  I started to think of any place that she could've copied it, but I couldn't think of anywhere where her name is written in all caps around the house.  When I write her name, I always write it with a capital to start and lowercase letters to follow (see picture above).  I asked her if she was serious, and I think she was kind of insulted that I asked!  She said, "I wrote it by myself.  I didn't copy it!  I know how to write my name all by myself."  I just couldn't believe that she'd done that in the living room all alone, with no one to help her come up with letters or show her how to form them!

 Saunders and I thought this was a huge accomplishment, and we praised her to the high heavens.  Katie Anne didn't think it was too important - she said, "I wrote my name yesterday, and no one cared."  She ran to get the paper where she'd written her name ... and then colored over most of it with a navy blue marker.  So, technically this is the second time she'd written it by herself.  :)

Then, I noticed that her name ended with "RITI".  I thought she might have been trying to write Jones, but she told me that wasn't what she had written - she said, "I wrote Katie Anne and then Rainy because the weather is rainy."  So, she sounded out the correct initial sound of R and the correct final sound of I - not too shabby for only three years old!

*I'm behind on blogging, so it's been about a week and a half since Katie Anne wrote her name on January 27.  (I've backdated this post so I'll remember the exact date she wrote her name later.)  Since these pictures were made, Katie Anne has written her name by herself on everything - school papers, coloring pages, three birthday cards, a baby shower card, and lots more!  She's an official name writer!