My Oldest is Reading!

I've been really lazy about blogging lately, but I posted this* on a message board and facebook page in March and just never transferred it here:

When E was 4, I blogged that I thought she was close to reading. She knew most of her letters and sounds and was very interested in trying. It didn't happen though. Her brain wasn't ready yet.

When she was 6, I thought she was close.  She was skills-wise, but not time-wise.  It has been a year since then. 

We have never done a "reading lesson." We have never done a curriculum or workbooks. There has never been a single tear over trying to read and I've never pushed her.

I've read many books to her since she was a baby. We've paid attention to the words in our lives- on signs, cereal boxes, labels, video games and everywhere else. She's played Starfall and similar games. I've told her the sounds of letters as she has been interested. We've played with magnet letters and banana grams. She's played with a few workbooks, and when I say played I really mean just that. The workbooks sit with the coloring books in our house and are treated the same way- use them if and when you want. We've played a reading flash card game the same way.  I just wrote some action words on index cars (play, dance, sing, etc) and when I'd hold one up, she'd read it and do the action.  It has been a fun, totally optional game that L has enjoyed as well.
 
However, I've never once sat down with her and said or implied, "Now it's time to try to learn to read."

A few weeks ago, she read The Foot Book and half of another book that was at the doctor's office and I don't remember the name of it. Some of The Foot Book was memorized, but she also sounded out a lot of words, and started picking up on some sight words.

Then she didn't do anything reading related for weeks, which is typical. She often has a big interest in something, then drops it for weeks or months, then picks it up again with sudden, new skills.

Yesterday, she was looking for The Foot Book and we couldn't find it. Today, I found it and handed it to her. She read it and then asked for more books to read. I pulled out Green Eggs and Ham and she read the whole thing!. I helped her with a few words that couldn't be sounded out and she didn't know from sight,
but other than that, she figured it out on her own while I just sat with her.

Her reading was interspersed every few sentences with, "Mom! I'm reading! Hehe! Yay! I'm reading! Hey you know what's more fun than watching tv? Me learning to read!"

(And on that note, we don't restrict tv watching and she could have chosen to do that instead with no pressure to do otherwise. Her sister was actually watching a movie in the same room the whole time she was reading the book. She chose to read).

*I changed some grammar and spelling issues and added a few more details from the original post.

Update:

It's been about 3 months since I wrote that, and she has not done a lot of book reading since then.  However, she is still doing a lot of reading related things.  She has read parts of recipes to me while we cook, read signs and labels, and played reading games.  She woke up one morning last week and immediately said she wanted to "play a game that will help me read better," so we did some sound flash cards.  Yesterday and today, we saw signs that said "stop" and "slow" while driving, and E,L and I started playing a game figuring out how to spell words that rhymed with stop and slow, based on how those two words are spelled.  So, since stop is S-T-O-P, they were able to figure out that cop is C-O-P and mop is M-O-P and so on with half a dozen other words.  Since slow is S-L-O-W, they were able to figure out row, bow, arrow, mow, and tow.      

Inevitable Mondays- Strewing Games

Yesterday when I organized their games, I pulled out some things they had not seen for a long time including a big bucket full of plastic and foam letters.  They spent a lot of time playing with them today- stacking them in piles, spreading them all over the table, pretending they were pancakes and trying to spell words.  At one point, E asked me how to spell "whispers," and after she was done putting all the letters together she tried to sound it out.  She insisted that the R and the S on the end needed to be reversed.  We went back and forth for a few minutes- in a relaxed, playful way, not arguing- and then I let it go.  She was wrong of course, but that's not important right now.  She was really working through sounding out the letters and trying to place them the way she was hearing them.  That's an important part of learning to read!  L was having fun naming the letter and number "pancakes." ("I want a S pancake!  Now a blue one!")   

Pulling out the games was one more step in the most recent ebb (or flow?) of this ebbing and flowing life.  For the last few weeks, we've been settling in to new routines for the winter.  The girls had been taking dance and gymnastics classes, but since we are without a car, it is now to cold to walk.  All summer they played outside in our yard for hours every day, but now they stay inside more.  So I've been working on finding more indoor things to do.  Now that the games are organized I can see clearly what we need to get for Hanukkah gifts.  I'm also going to get them some art supplies and E might be getting a trampoline for her birthday.  I went searching for online games for them to play and found this list of the Top 10.  Ignore the intro- it's a totally mainstream "get your kid to learn by making it fun!" kind of thing.  Maybe I'll post reviews of the games once the girls start playing them more

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Writing her Name

E was writing quite a few letters for a while and then the last few months pretty much stopped. She still did lots of "writing" in her notebooks, but it was mostly I, O, and U over and over. I wondered why she had stopped practicing other letters, but didn't say anything. Sometimes we write together and I would write words down for her to see. She likes to make lists- grocery lists or to pretend that we are at a restaurant and will write down our order. So we would take turns writing words, her writing combinations of I, O and U and me writing actual words.

This week she went to Vacation Bible School for the first time. On the first day when I picked her up, she showed me where she had written her name on the back of a picture she drew. I asked the teacher if it was done by herself and she said yes. One letter was backwards and one was missing, but for an 8 letter name, pretty good!

The next day she wrote her name again at home and it was missing several letters. She looked at it for a minute and said, "Wait! That's not right." And sounded out what it *actually* said. Then she asked me to write it for her so she could copy it and I did. She copied it perfectly.

The funny thing about all this is that the last few weeks she has been watching more tv than usual. D has been out of town for work, and I have been juggling the kids, my part of the apartment complex work and his maintenance work. On top of that, my car broke down, so we have been walking everywhere. All this has meant that I have less time to be as engaged with her.

I'm not proud of being less engaged, but at the same time I do see an interesting trend. When she has more periods of tv watching it seems to be that her mind is churning something over and she comes out of it with a new skill. I am becoming less and less concerned about the ebbs and flows of our lives and learning to just ride the waves. We have periods of time where we are constantly looking things up on the internet, doing science experiments, getting lots of books at the library, having wonderful, engaging discussions. Then we have times where there is a lot of watching tv, she plays by herself more yet at the same time is more emotionally needy. Lately she's been saying "I'm feeling shy," which if you know her is kind of funny. She is extremely outgoing! But she means that she is kind of DONE with people right then.

I am looking forward to D coming home so I have more time to be engaged with her. Even though she seems to be in a cacoon phase, I would like for it to be one where I am readily available if needed rather than too busy for her. But I am not stressing about this season. It will pass and come again, because life is full of those ebbs and flows.