A Thanksgiving lesson with my mom…
My mother is dyslexic and loves history and language. At first she wasn’t in the room when a conversation started about Florida. I heard my dad pronounce it, then had him say it again. I was thinking about how we say it differently from people who did not grow up in the mid-Atlantic region (flɑɹdə vs flɔɹdə), and we somehow ended up at “fluoride,” and I was reminded of the self-study I did with that word.
Studying this word helped me discover there is an <-id> suffix. I also realized there are several words that have a similar pattern:
flu + or flu + id
liqu + or liqu + id
rige/ + or rige/ + id
stupe/ + or stupe/ + id
I explained a little bit to my dad, and basically got, "Mmhm, that’s interesting." So when my mom came into the room, I knew she would not only find it interesting, but it would help her understand all kinds of connections between words.
My mom and I ended up having a 10-minute conversation about all kinds of things, including where fluoride comes from and why it’s in our water. You can see everything we got to discuss on the pic of the page we used during our discussion. And that was just 10 minutes of talking about the topic.
When I think about what 10 minutes would have been spent on when I used to teach OG-based phonics, I’m so happy and thankful that I have this new understanding that I can share. And I will always share it with anyone who will listen. Ha ha!!
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