The Beginnings

At the beginning of the year, when we set our individual and family goals, we talked about how Eliza had the potential to start reading this year.  It dawned on me recently that I haven't done enough to help her meet that goal.

So yesterday afternoon when she was home (since she doesn't have school on Mondays), and Luke was napping, she and I had Learning Time.  We've spent Learning Times in the past going over the first several letters of the alphabet, so I started with that.  We pulled out the fleece letters I made for Jack's Christmas present a couple of years ago and went over the first 10 letters, one at a time, talking about the name of the letter and the sound it makes, with Eliza writing the letter down.  Once we'd gone through to J and then put out all the letters and had Eliza find various letters and put them in order, I decided to try to see if she could begin reading them.  I made several 3-letter words, swapping out one letter at a time: DIG - FIG - BIG - BAG - BAD - HAD - FAD.  I helped her make the sounds and blend them together, and pretty soon she got the hang of it!

We were starting to eat into her screen time, so I asked her if she wanted to stop after a few minutes, and she said she just wanted to keep practicing reading.  Yeah!  Once she was bored with the activity, she started making her own words, then wanted help spelling real words.  She asked me how to spell "HOO" and since we only have one of each letter, Eliza suggested we use a Q for the second O.  Then she grabbed her owl puppet.