z-o-o spells zoo

Kiddo is intensely interested in how to spell things these days. Many words that come up in conversation will be followed up with "how do you spell that?" We help her sound it out, and then move on with life. She can separate the first sound from the word on her own, the rest of the word needs more help. We posted some sight words around the house, but Babs and her little friend Mac made short work of most of them. She knows all her letters, and all the sounds they make. I'm trying to help her grow within her abilities without pushing her, because really, my three-year old does not need to know how to read. (But we've still got six months of this year, so who knows what will happen.) She does not seem to remember how to spell any of the words after we dissect them, so we have repeated quite a few words in our spelling adventures.

And then there's the word zoo. She saw it two visits ago. I helped her "read" the word, then moved on, not thinking much about it. But every two or three days she announces randomly that "z-o-o spells zoo" and then asks "remember when we went to the zoo with..." and fills in the visit and visitors that she is thinking of.

Here are some pictures of our last two trips.

At the fountain. I let my kid stick her hands in, it's true. Most other parents don't appreciate this choice I make. It's just too hard to keep my kid out of water.
Kiddo only loves a few parts of the zoo. We rarely go anywhere else in the zoo unless we're with someone who hasn't been there before. We visit the above-mentioned fountain, the train, the plastic statues she can climb on, and the farm animals and feed the birds. She also has a love-hate relationship with the carousel.

Here she has finally managed to convince a bird to eat off her feeding stick. She is wet from a misting station, not sweat (although there's plenty of that there too).
Here is Babs at the statues (which you can't see). Moments after this picture was taken, as I was taking to my dear friend who was at the zoo with me, a good mom came up to me and said, "Do you know she is eating rocks?" Shoot! They are her favorite size for chewing.

A few weeks later we were back, this time with cousins! Her brothers were there too, but my picture of them has L with his eyes closed, so I thought I'd spare him. But everything is more fun with cousins, and it was very nice to have extra help with my little wanderer (Kiddo that is, Babs doesn't move very fast yet).

Here we are on the train. We usually have to wait about 10 minutes to get on the train, which is really hard for Kiddo. She slowly tries to move up in the line, and yells "Let's get on the train!" while I try to tell her about waiting in line and waiting our turns. Mothers around me smile understandingly as they are either a) having the same conversation with their own kids, or b) have had them earlier.
It's nice to have such a fun place to visit.