My Baby is Reading!!!!

Ok I knew this day was coming, but I am REALLY excited! Ella has started reading. Now don't get me wrong people. She is not picking up the Wall Street Journal or New York Times ;) BUT the only and best way to teach your children how to read is to have them make the connection between the sounds the letters make and string them together.

In the past we researched flashcards and other methods for teaching kids to read. But most of the research indicated that children don't really learn how to read that way. That they just learn how to memorize what a word looks like on the paper. For instance, Ella could read the word C-A-T for over a year now along with the word D-O-G. She has been able to recognize her name ELLA on paper for even longer. But she was not actually reading them. She just remembered that C-A-T was the word Cat from one of her favorite flashcards as a kid and that her name always looks like ELLA on paper. Another thing kids do is memorize stories you have read, and also guess what the words say on the page based on the photos in the book. So I often have to cover the picture so she looks to the words to figure out what is going on in stead of looking at the picture. :) But now she gets it. C says "Kuh" A says "Ah" and T says "T. Put that together and you get CAT :)

So that is how you start. You keep it simple with 3 letter words. Cat, Bat, Hat, Sat, Man, Can, Pan, Fan, Bob, etc and you teach them till they make the connection. Now she is sounding out words like difficult. But we break it up into DIF FIC ULT and then she puts the three together. Of course I have to help her and it takes us over 2 minutes sometimes to get through one sentence.

So this is a process but you should see how proud of herself she gets as she starts sounding out the letter "Sss" "Te" "Aw" "Pe" oh Mommy that's the word STOP!! :) So wish my baby luck as she starts on this journey. OH... and the best part about learning how to read is that learning how to write goes hand in hand. This morning I came out to find her trying to spell Pinkalicious for her friend Madison's birthday. Here is what she wrote:

P-I-K-A-L-S-H-I-S

(yes she forgot the N, but the rest of it is pretty damn good huh!?) I am so excited for her and this road she is going down. My baby is getting so big. :)