Last week, we finished Elephant Academy. Emma is done with her workbooks for the summer, but that doesn’t mean that we’re done learning! One of Em’s favorite games (created by the ever creative Papi) involves twenty-six letter magnets that she has to put into order, while telling us the names of the letters and the sound each one makes. She still struggles to remember all the sounds, but we’ve discovered that she’s quite good at coming up with words that start with each of the letters. For example, she has a hard time telling you what “w” sounds like, but she knows that Papi’s name starts with one of them. I’m not sure what someone with a background in elementary education would say about this, but I’m just going to conclude that it means she’s a genius. You know, because I’m her mother, and that’s always the conclusion I come to, even as she eating icy rock salt out of an ice cream maker and yelling, horrified, “Somethin’ is WRONG with this ice!” (True story.)

That said, would you believe that the last time she and I played this game, all of the words she picked for the letters were Walt Disney World related? (Except for X, Y, and Z because… well, those are hard enough without the WDW emphasis, right?)

I’ve concluded that this doesn’t make her merely a genius… it makes her a Disney genius. Which is totally understandable, since she’s been growing up Disney…

2009

2012

(Just a sample, for those who were interested…

A is for Adventureland
B is for Brer Rabbit
C is for Country Bears
D is for Donald Duck
E is for Elephants at the Kilimanjaro Safari
F is for Figment
G is for Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrow
H is for Hollywood Studios
I is for Ice Cream (of the Mickey Bar variety, of course)
J is for Jungle Cruise
K is for Kingdom
L is for lunch (which we do eat at WDW… is that stretching it?)
M is for Mickey Mouse
N is for Nemo
O is for Ostriches at the Kilimanjaro Safari
P is for Peter Pan
Q is for the Queen (from Snow White’s Scary Adventures)
R is for Railroad
S is for Small World
T is for Tower of Terror
U is for Ursula
V is for Vidia
W is for Wishes
X… eh…
Y… eh…
Z… eh…)