She can read?

I decided to start schooling Summer this past August when all the other kids went back to school, mostly because I had time and I thought she would enjoy it. At first I figured we would spend about 3-4 hours a morning on school, after we started and reality set in it was more like an hour at the most. In the beginning I planned out elaborate lesson plans and spent a lot of time on the computer researching and finding ideas. It was a lot of work!

Background: When Summer started actually watching TV she enjoyed watching Sesame Street. At some point Summer found Word World and every night before bed Summer watches World Word to help wind down and learn a little. My point is - it wasn't all me!

After a couple months of busy school and seeing what did and didn't work I took a new approach, I would not work on letters because Summer knew them all, somehow, uppercase and lowercase and all their sounds. She cannot write them very well and really has no interest in trying to write the little letters in the lines, so we stopped trying, instead we took the bucket of foam letters, dumped them on the carpet in the middle of the room - away from the kitchen table where we started originally, and created words. I would give Summer three letters, for example a C O W in random order and tell her to sound out and spell cow. Then I would put it aside and do another word. Most of the words were three letters words, besides her name. After we spelled about 12-15 words, that I had set aside, I had Summer try to read them back to me, so not only was she sounding them out and spelling the word, she was also sounding out the same words and reading them. I didn't think it was really working until this weekend.

Dr. Seuss, he is amazing, and thanks to some of his silly books I realized that Summer could figure out the words in the books. She would say little and if the word was small I would say no sound it out and she would figure it out. This went on all weekend and I figured she might actually be able to read more. At the bookstore today I bought a pack of first word flashcards. I got home tonight, opened the pack, and to my shocking surprise, Summer was able to sound out and read the words!

I am in shock. My child, at 3 years old, can read. I said she would be reading by 3 but I didn't figure it would be this early, she just turned 3 in July! She has work to do yet but she has the general idea, thanks to Sesame Street, World Word, and foam letters!



Being a mom is so rewarding!