Miriam worked on her school work in the dining room, writing a composition. She called out to her mother , “How do you spell ‘couples’?” Peggy volunteered an answer, “L, N, G, P, L.” While Gretchen supplied a more nearly standard one. A few seconds later, Peggy came up to me, “I know how to spell ‘tree’, ” and then continued with her spelling, “L, N, G, P, L.”

Relevance: Here we see Peggy refining her idea of what it means to spell a word. We have letters instead of “Woof boogle jig.” She showed no concern that both words were spelled with the same letters and none at the arbitrariness of the letters assigned.