"I want to read," he said
Actually he said, "Nes, Nes, I want to read. I want to learn to read."Nes, by the way, is Logan's "I'm so attached to No it follows me over to the affirmative" way of saying Yes.
We were stretched out on his bed first thing this morning reading stories from what Logan referred to as "the biggest book I ever saw." He started pointing to various words in the story asking me "What that say?" After a few inquiries I closed the book slightly to help direct his attention to me and away from the page. "Logan, do you want to learn to read?" I asked him. He very (and I do mean very) excitedly replied with the above.
Now this isn't quite as far a stretch as it may seem for this 2 year old. I mean after all he's known his alphabet for well over a year now - not the song, we're talking about identifying the actual letters. He knows nearly half of his letter sounds now. He can spell his own name and recognize a few of words in print. He understands that letters go together to make words and words together to make up parts of his stories. He brings me all sorts of items lately (mail, ads, various products with labels) and says "What that say?" The next logical step is reading.
We spent some time this morning with his "Step 1" books working on sounding out words and identifying words that reappear often in the text. This afternoon we traveled to Hammet's Learning World and came home with a work book on early phonics through rhyme, Phonics cards and a CD of songs designed to teach phonics. He was so eager in that store. He even told the lady he was there because he wanted to learn to read. When we got back in the car he said to me "Mommy, go home now. I want to read my new book and learn to read."
We've been careful NOT to say things like "now you can read on your own" that would imply "you don't need us so we'll just be here to read to Megan and you're on your own kid." Instead we say "When learn to read you can read us a story at bedtime." The one thing though, that's he's most excited about is that he can read to Megan. Whenever we talk about him reading to us, he quickly adds "I can read to Megan!" He tries to do so now. He has a few of the short, more basic board books memorized. He'll sit next to her and "read" them from memory. What a lucky girl Megan is, so many people to read to her -- maybe even her big brother!
posted by Sandy at
9:32 PM
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