Adventures in Reading: Lesson 19

Noogs is coming along with her reading, though we've hit a slight block: she wants to sound out her words as disjointed sounds, instead of connecting them. Thus, "ram" becomes "r-a-m". I don't think this is unusual in learning to read, but it's odd that at first she should have blended the sounds together and then now want to isolate them. But then -- brain flash! -- earlier I was reading the words slowly first and then having her sound them out, and now she sounds them out alone, so she doesn't have my example to copy. Okay, never mind about the above...

She really enjoys reading the little stories in the book, then answering questions about the accompanying picture. The stories aren't complicated: "See the ram sit." "The rat is sad." It gives her a great sense of accomplishment to read them herself, though. After we're done with a lesson, she'll flip through the rest of the book and have me say some of the sounds we haven't learned yet. "I'm teaching you, Mommy!" she says.

Here's a word of caution for those trying to teach small children to read. One of the words she was sounding out was "ma". After she read it, I said, "Do you know what a sheep says? Maaaa!" This so tickled her that now when she sees the combination of a and m (such as "am") she'll start maaa-ing like a sheep until I make her pay attention and say each sound individually. It's her little in-joke. So mothers, don't make animal noises while teaching your children to read, or else you'll never hear the end of it.