One for you and one for me

Sammy is plodding along in his reading. We encourage him to sound out words he finds, sometimes with funny results.

We were reading the account of Noah last week, and I could tell Sammy's comprehension is there, as before he finished reading Genesis 7:23, which includes "and Noah only remained alive..." he paused and said, "No, the rest of the people in the ark were alive too." I told him to continue, and it read, "and they that were with him in the ark."

In chapter 7, the text reads, "...and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons..." So we discussed how some words with a f change when you make them plural. We got out his little composition notebook and went to the white board, and I made a little table for him to copy in his book. Singular words with f and then their plurals. We used the words wife, knife, and life.

I explained, "If you have one wife, its spelled with an f, but if you have several wives, its spelled with a v."

With the sense of great injustice, like someone missing out on their brownie after supper, Sammy loudly corrected:

"You can only have ONE wife."