Juniper: How do you spell the letters of a present?
Aaron: I don't understand. What do you mean?
Juniper: What are the letters of a Christmas present?
Sally: Like "gift"? Do you want to know how to spell gift? That's a word that means present.
Juniper: No. I want to spell something that you would wrap in Christmas paper.
Aaron: Like art? You might give someone some art for Christmas.
Juniper: Yeah!
Aaron: A-R-T. That's how you spell art.
Juniper: A-R-T is a good present.
Sally: I bet someone would be really happy to receive some art for a present.
Juniper: No, no, no. Don't say the word. Spell it. That way they won't know it and it will still be a surprise.
Perceptive kid. We did recently spell D-O-L-L as a potential present for Hazel and wouldn't tell Juniper what it meant, because we wanted it to be a surprise for everyone. After talking about giving A-R-T gifts, we went on to talk about J-A-M as a potential gift. Juniper was delighted to be able to talk about two gifts in a sneaky, spelling way. She expressed some pleasure in the fact that both A-R-T and J-A-M are spelled with letters that she knows. When we told Juniper that she already knows all the letters in all the words--that with her letters, she can spell any English word--she was amazed. There is an infinity of things Juniper doesn't know; it's perfectly reasonable for her to assume that of course there are all these other letters out there that she just hasn't learned yet.
