Learning to Read!

Carolyn has just passed the 4.5 year mark and is taking off with reading.  I was looking online tonight at You Can Read, thinking about whether or not to print out some of the work pages.  I've been struggling a little with how to work with her on reading, since she's quite stubborn and has her own agenda generally.  She also is very shy about trying new things and often won't try to sound out any words.  We do a ton of reading to both children, so I know she's getting exposure that way.  But she came over wondering what I was looking at, so I decided to see if she'd be interested.  We started with going over the 4 sight words in the first lesson.  Then we paged through towards the end and she started reading!  The only prompting I gave her was pointing to the words on the screen, and she read the first sentence!   It was absolutely amazing and we spent a few minutes exchanging hi-fives all around.  She then asked to keep going, and we went through the words in the first 8 lessons.  Of the 32 words we looked at, I'd say she has at least 25 of them down already.  It was so cool to watch.

I then took a look at Reading Eggs.  There is a 14 day trial that I think we'll do for the next couple weeks.  But I think it's below Carolyn's level in that she has ALL her letter sounds already.  Her pefectionist learning style just doesn't seem to fit very well.  But since there's a free trial, we'll take a look and see how she likes it.  I'm just so excited that she really is learning how to read!  I would bet she'll be reading fairly easily by the time she starts kindergarten, just like I was.  So awesome to watch her develop.

While I was looking at the site with Carolyn, James was literally trying to push her out of the way saying "I read too!"  It was really cute, although we certainly don't appreciate the pushing.  He wants to be big so bad.  I honestly don't remember what he should be working on at his age though.  He'll be 2.5 in another month.  We've been working mostly on colors and he'll ask what letters are printed on shirts/sweatshirts that we're wearing.  I probably should start working on identifying letters with him (maybe?).  He's so interested in learning everything that Carolyn is.

I'm so glad that we chose to keep Carolyn home this year.  Not only will it make moving that much easier, but the bond these kids have formed is awesome.  Carolyn often helps translate James' words, which eliminates some of his frustration.  And they learn to take turns and sort things out between each other more than they would elsewhere.  This is a relationship that they will have for life as well.  I'm excited to get them into a community where their learning will be pushed so they can keep developing at this warpspeed.  I think that going to the children's museum in Glenview is going to be awesome once we're closer.