Reading

So as y'all know I have been working on reading with Hayden. On a good week I will teach him 3-4 days and spend 30-45 minutes on different lessons. Hayden absolutely loves it. We work on different skills like counting, patterns, writing numbers, one to one correspondence (which is counting objects), sorting, matching, shape classification learning letters sounds, writing his name, letters, reading words, singing songs, reading nursery rhymes, and matching first letters to pictures. I think the thing Hayden enjoys the most is feeling excited when he learns something new. During reading he works on a few words and then I find books that have the new words in them. It took us some time for him to understand how print and books work. It wasn't like I woke up and said, Yes I need to teach Hayden how to read. It is a long process. Just because a kid knows all of the letters in the alphabet doesn't mean that they are ready to read. When Hayden turned two we really hit it hard. When we read books to Hayden we pointed to the words, went over story structure and sequence and of course asked him LOTS of questions. All of this helps him now. I know every parent thinks their kid is smart or athletic. We all want our kids to succeed. I see things in Hayden that I see in my 5 and 6 year olds. I see him making connections and putting different things that he learned together. The trickiest part when teaching kids how to read is concept of print. He doesn't really understand that you can't "make" up the story. You have to read whats there. I did this lesson just like I would do in the classroom. We learned our new word...the, we looked at all of the pictures, we went and found and pointed to the on each page, then he read. It will be this way until he becomes a fluent reader. When kids start reading we want them to be successful so we give them the tools to do that. When Hayden knows about 30-35 sight words and can look at the pictures for clues he won't need to do all of that. When you watch this video it was his second time reading the book. This is really ALL him. I didn't coach him or really help him.



I am SO PROUD OF HIM!!! David and I value education a lot so he is headed in the right direction!