sound it out

I’ll let mater expound on the subject when she has time, but I wanted to make sure it was properly noted in the annals of history that Linnaea can now read.

I came into the living room while feeding the animals to see Linnaea standing by mater, who was sitting on the couch, doing her happy-dance.  When excited, usually expectant – for a present or, say, chocolate – Linnaea wiggles her bottom side to side in an incredibly cute happy-dance.  So I knew something was up.    Mater calls me over and tells me the news.  Holding up a page in one of the Bob Books, mater covered up all but the first word of the two-word sentence showcased thereon.  And letter by letter, Linnaea sounded it out, and then assembled the phonetics into a word.  Sam.  Then on to the next.  Sat.  Then the whole sentence.  Sam sat.  We’ve been working with sounding words out for a bit now, but last night it clicked.  And she can read.  I guess it won’t be long now before she’s correcting me when I read her stories at bedtime.  (I sometimes abridge them to help them fit the time slot, or edit content.)

I think one of the things that has helped her is a present she received for her birthday.  The Winnie-the-Pooh laptop (Linnaea loves to check her email) uses cards that are inserted into the “monitor” that  depict a scene with Pooh and his friends.  Several objects in the scene are labeled.  Pooh then asks the child different questions about the picture: what color is something, who is to the left of someone else, how many other things are there, etc.  But he also asks questions about spelling: what is the first letter of the word, or how do you spell the word?  At first I figured the spelling questions would just be something that she would skip for now, hoping that they didn’t frustrate her.  But not too long ago, I realized she was answering them, and doing so correctly.  So she had figured out that the words next to the objects were the words for those objects.  If you know that, answering what the first letter is is no problem.  Spelling them is only difficult because it usually takes her longer to find all of the letters than Pooh allows her to respond – but she gets it.

So, to recap, Trip has teeth and will probably be crawling in a matter of days, and Linnaea, when she isn’t trying to swallow barrettes or suffocate herself trying to hide from thunderstorms that may or may not exist, can read.   =)