First and Last

Kit, her mom, Claire, and I were playing a game called "First and Last" from a deck of cards called "52 alternatives to TV". This game read as such...

Someone says the name of an animal, and the next person says an animal that starts with the last letter of the name. So if you said "elephant," the next person might say "tiger." Take turns saying animals without repeating any until someone can't thin of another one. The last person left gets to pick the next category (countries, people's names, etc.).

This turned out to be a pretty fun game. We did not make Claire play since she, uh, cannot read or spell, but she sort of hung around and watched. The game was pretty tough, actually. It went something like this...

Kit: Elephant
Joyce: Tiger
Pat: Raccoon
Kit: Nene (this is a Hawaiian bird from a book Joyce brought back from Hawaii)
Claire: Eagle!

Yes, the three year old jumped in with a good answer. She even said it with real conviction, like she just knew "eagle" was right. We cannot say how Claire knew "Nene" ended in an "e" and "Eagle" started in the same letter. She may have gone by the sounds of the words, or it may have been a lucky guess, or maybe she actually knew what she was talking about. We'll give her the benefit of the doubt and go with the last one.