teach my daughter to read

is that she asks me how to spell words while she writes, but sometimes she doesn’t remember what a letter looks like.

I filled a lidded casserole with dried split peas and pull that out when she’s writing. If she asks what a letter looks like, I trace it while describing how to draw it. The “image” only stays visible for a moment before filling in, so daughter is building her visual memory of the letter rather than just copying it.

I’ve been seeing through my son’s therapies that visual memory is such a crucial but overlooked skill to reading abilities. Even though I don’t have the same concerns with daughter, I’m sure that strengthening the same skills were lead to faster and better reading.

Spoiler alert: she reads and parental gushing ensues

OK, still some work to go on this goal. But I am so pleased with how daughter is doing. She’s sounding out words and matching them to pictures, mostly just one syllable words, but yay! She just came to me with one of son’s books and exclaimed proudly “Mum I can rhyme” and proceeded to read “lock, rock, dock, sock”. No sweetie, that’s better than rhyming, that’s reading.

Now she’s trying to do son’s lessons with “ch, sh, dr…”etc, and having a total tantrum. Time for a nap.

I don’t make many entries under my teach the kids to read goals, but we’ve been working on this almost every day. Daughter is amazing me with how fast she picks up her sight words. And she’s sounding out but relying heavily on context from pictures, which is still great.

I realized quite happily yesterday that she still has a year and a half until kindergarten and at the rate she’s going, reading on her own might be reality before school starts!

And she loves it, every night after bedtime she’s sneaking out of bed to get books to look at until she falls asleep. Gives me the warm fuzzies.

So the little pumpkin knows all her letters and what sounds they make. But how to put it all together and sound out words?
She can “read” a couple of the simple Bob books, and it looks very convincing, but I know she’s just got them memorized. She can read “cat”, “hat”, “bat”, “mat”, “go”, “Po”, and “no”, as well as her name, her brother’s name, Mom, Dad, and “puppy”. That’s pretty good for someone who just turned 4! Her handwriting is nice too.

I did a good job finding childcare for my daughter!!! I found a daycare with a tight schedule, and runs as a full time preschool following montessori principals. It’s only 8 children and one caregiver with practicum students. The caregiver is just excellent. Anyway, the reason I’m writing under this goal is because this week the “art” daughter has been taking home has included her writing out words for the first time. First word Mom.

I’ve had her copying letters for a while and knew she was probably ready to start writing words. So I kind of wish I had been the one to start her writing words, not someone I pay. But that’s just an ego thing. I’m pretty proud of her though.

I am so happy. Daughter just read a book to me!!!!!

It is a very repetative book that I read to her yesterday, so I know a lot of it was memory. But still, that was reading. She pointed to the words as she read them.

Yippee!!!

Daughter is liking this so much that I can’t get anything else done! I certainly can’t sit down for a minute (I am standing at the counter pretending to do dishes just to type this), the moment I sit down that curly haired moppet climbs into my lap, cups my face in her little hands and says “please, please, please can we do my leddererrrrrrrs please please please”. How do I say “no” to that? It sounds wonderful, it is wonderful, but it’s stopping me from doing everything else. I am starving myself and holding my bladder too long just because I don’t want to miss these wonderful opportunities. It reminds me of my lactating days.

I guess I’ll just “ride the wave”.

^{Interesting (to me anyway) I haven’t really spent any time getting daughter to write, just read. Yesterday at the library she took a form and filled it out with nonsense words. But nonsense words of very nicely formed letters all fitting perfectly into the boxes. And her printing is neater than my own.}

Last week daughter and I played a game where she had to sort imaginary litter into recycling bins. Each time, we would say the word “Paper” or “Plastic” and read the word. Last night she saw the same game and immediately read the word “plastic”. I called my hubby upstairs and made a big deal that she had read the word “plastic” but he thought it was just that she was well-trained (isn’t that what reading basically is?) So I wrote Paper and Plastic on index cards and asked her to read them. She did. Hubby took the cards and kept mixing them up and asking her again to test her. He even tried to confuse her (he got in trouble for this). She knows those words. Ha! It was only last week I finished teaching her the alphabet.

She is doing so well! Of course she still needs assistance but the important thing is she’s eager to learn and she gives it her best. I’ll consider this done :)

She’s sounding out letters and trying to spell words on her own. Kindergarten really gave her that extra push she needed. We’ll keep working on this some more and goal will considered complete! (Well, it’s a start)