My 5- year old author

My daughter, Madyson just started kindergarten and is at the beginning of her career as a reader and writer.  She has always loved to have stories read to her.  Now I am witness to something absolutely amazing in watching her learn to read and write. In fact, this is so amazing that I am very seriously  kicking myself for not going into early childhood education.  I think that being the teacher that gives a child the tools and ability to read year after year has to be incredibly rewarding.  Since we are all going to be English teachers, I thought that I would share a little about how she is being taught to read and create stories.
Among the most basic things that they are doing is teaching the children phonetics.  I have been working on this with her basically every chance I had since she learned to recite the alphabet (which was, mind you, pretty early).  Obviously when I started this, it was way before she should ever make the connection that letters all made their own sounds.  So, I think that my exposing her to this concept before she started school helped (at least I hope it did).  Regardless, there must be something magical about kindergarten teachers or kindergarten classrooms that makes kids actually want to learn this stuff, becuase when I was trying to explain sounds to her, and how "sounds go together to make a word" she was way more interested in playing with play-doh, or any number of fun things she could have been doing rather than talk about the sounds that letters make.  Rest assured, I didn't make my lessons boring either, we made words with our fingers in the sand, and made letters out of the afore-mentioned play-doh for some good old tactile learning, but alas, not much interest until entering magical room 304 at her school.
Aside from phonetics, they are learning what she calls "popcorn words"  these are sight words such as a, my, the. . .etc. that the kids should recognize immediately by sight.  I don't really understand why they are called popcorn words.  From what I understand there is no snack involved.  I'll be sure to keep you all posted about this.
There are many other interestng components to her learning process, but as everyone may not find my daughter's learning to read quite as fascinating as I do, I'll skip to the good stuff.
She is learning to create stories as well.  She has been doing this for years, as I'm sure all kids do, but is starting to get the basic heuristics for invention at 5 years old.  She has what she calls a "creation sheet,"  and on this sheet there are six numbered characters and six numbered settings.  In class, the kids roll 2 dice to see what character and what setting they get.  From that, they draw a picture, and then create a story based on their picture, and share the story with the class.  She loves this!  We have the sheet on the kitchen table at home, and she has drawn and created about a dozen stories based on her creation sheet combinations.  She has also informed me that she is going to be a "famous storywriter" and she would like me to make books out of the stories that she has created thus far (which, by the way, I am thrilled about, because previously she wanted to be a "car-fixer" becuase of a children's museum experience over the summer)  I am seriously considering making another blog that is a compilation of all of her stories along with pictures that I scan in to correspond with her tales. 
I think that it is important for us, as these student's future English teachers, to understand their beginnings.  I always hear complaints among people about writing, and how people hate to write papers (not necessarily among English major types).  I think that we should know and remember as teachers that writing was once fun for all students.  I don't know when the big chage happens, where some students decidedly hate writing, and some love it, but it would be an interesting aspect to study.  I think that if we are able to keep reading and writing fun in our classrooms, and meet the needs of each student as much as we are able, maybe we can reignite the love of words and writing that many of these students had in kindergarten.
So, if there are any among us who are going to be reading specialists, or who are going to teach kindergarten, you may find this as interesting as I do.  For the rest of you who may just think I am a mother using this as an excuse to talk about her daughter and are currently bored out of your mind, I apologize, and you're probably right.