Thursday, April 2, 2009

More Reading



Princess keeps chipping away at breaking the reading code. She doesn't know she is, but I can see it.

She'll ask me as she's writing on her picture..."How do you spell 'handmade' again, Mum?" I can't remember how many times she's asked me (and I have it written on a piece of card near the art table for her as well), or how many times she has written it without asking.

But my job is to answer questions, and so I do.

Yesterday, she was studying her (rather disgusting lolly) for an extraordinary amount of time as we waited for a train, then she announced, "I think this says "Triple Power Push Pop" , and she was right.

Today she asked me to read to her, and so I did. I said I wanted to do some more tidying, but she argued that books were more important.

I said, "You are more important than the tidying". She agreed children are important, but books came next.

Later I was feeding Tombliboo and she asked if I would read some more. I said I would, or if she wanted she could read a book to Tombliboo. She wanted to read, and did very wel. She stopped a few times to ask what does "th" say, or some such thing...but mostly she read alone.

It wasn't a hard book (Maisy), but she did it, and she enjoyed it. She read "today" without sounding it out, and I was surprised. She didn't know how she knew it.

The bit that really amazed me was when she sounded out "delicious"...she was reading for meaning as well as sounding out every word. She read "di-eh-ll...delicious". I said, "You just read 'delicious'...that's a very big word- I'm going to faint!"

She said, "I don't see why- I only guessed- it had to say 'delicious'." And she was right, no other word beginning with d-e-l woudl have made sense in the sentence, but it was really cool.

8 comments:

Kiwi_Mama said...

The Christmas before MissM was 7 she looked at me and stated "You have to teach me to read!" We started reading 2 - 3 books each day. Within 3 months she was reading fluently and she is now on par with Mstr10. When they want to learn they will we just need to support them and offer the odd little bit of help here and there.

Shady Lady said...

This is so exciting! We have been having the same leaps here with our Princess. She is so excited to read and often wants to read book after book. I think these two Princesses would get along quite famously!

Shell (in NZ) said...

I honestly think there is no teaching necessary...reading is naturally learned in an interesting environment, with interested parents.

Princess has been on the verge of a breakthrough for so long, but she is really building her confidence now.

One interesting thing I notice is that if I suggest she reads- she does so, but won't generally pick up a book to read herself.

I'm half wondering if I should suggest it more, but don't want to push.

Shell (in NZ) said...

Another interesting aspect is the teeth...she's 6 and a half, with 2 adult teeth, and the front top teeth are wiggly- not overly, but definitely on their way.

I can just see Princess being a poster child for Steiner's thoughts on teeth and reading, lol...it will be so interesting (to me) to see if fluency arrives at the same time as her upper front adult teeth.

Of course, J-Man was utterly different...had already stopped reading before he lost his first lower front tooth.

Noixcoco said...

So cool! I can't wait to see Anouk doing the same...

Hilaree said...

Hey there! We haven't communicated on each others' blogs for a while so I thought I'd see what you were up to! Your little guy is humongous! Hope you are well...

Kiwi_Mama said...

My version of teaching reading was to sit and listen to Miss M read then point out words or sounds as requested.
To make this a regular thing I sat down each night and asked her if she'd like for us to read together. Then we'd usually take turns reading pages or books. This mostly happened while the boys were on the PS3 with D.

Ruth said...

When I think about how I learn, I always learn what I want to know. Coercive learning (like in school being made to so stuff) totally dampens the learning spirit I reckon. It has only been unschooling myself that I have really harnessed my natural ability to learn what I truly want. It's the same for kids too I suppose, if they're given a free environment where they are able to make thier own choices about their own learning. 'Trust the children' is my mantra because I often find myself 'teaching' words when my kids haven't asked or don't need to know (4 and nearly 2!!). SO cool the Princess is reading..it opens up a whole new world for them eh :).
ps, good quote today from Maps...no wonder I thrived, then didn't, thrived, then didn't all the way through childhood!