6 June 2010 Reading

We’re very excited here chez nous. On Friday Sam found a crossword puzzle book that her cousins gave her for Christmas. When I told her that she couldn’t do it until she had learned to read and write, she pouted and flounced off. A little while later she came back and said, “Mommy, let’s do a reading class.”

We’ve been doing phonics/reading lessons since November–nothing too complicated or involved–just a review of the sounds of the alphabet, following the instructions of The Ordinary Parents’ Guide to Teaching Reading (Wise & Buffington). Up till now Sam has found it difficult to sound out words, and she didn’t seem terribly interested in the activity, so I haven’t pushed it.

But on Friday we sat down with an easy reader and suddenly– she can do it! We read two easy readers together. She did another one with her father that night. Today, father and daughter went to the library and borrowed a few more.

And because this is Sam–she who must adapt every experience to be her own (she insisted that SHE was teaching the reading class)–she’s been writing her own easy reader books now, using some of the new words she’s reading.

The plots may be thin, and the narratives… challenging… but this one we found plenty humorous:

Transcription:
Hi
Tutu!
By By
My
Hi Hi Sam
Pitlochry

Parents: “Sam, do you know what that last word says?!”
Sam: “No.”
Parents: “It says “Pitlochry.”
Sam: “Oh! I just copied it from a book on the floor.”

Apparently, with an emerging reader in the house, we have to watch what reading material we leave lying around.