Mira can now identify 15 letters (capitals only, not lowercase). If you point to a letter and ask her what the letter is she can say it or if you ask her where is the letter Y (or A or L or any of the other 15 letters she knows) she can point it out on a page of words.
Recently she's also started trying to write some letters. She's really good at writing M and I and O, but she also likes to try R and V and N.
I don't feel like I've really pushed her to learn the alphabet, she just seems really interested in it. We'll be reading a book and she'll start pointing to the letters and saying what they are; sometimes she seems more interested in the text than the pictures. And some of her favorite toys are letters, too. She has a set of tub toys that are letters that stick to the wall when wet and she also has a set of alphabet magnets that she puts on our front door. When she colors, she often brings me the crayons and asks me to draw certain letters.
I'm glad that she's shown so much interest in it. I wonder if it's because she loves to read so much and somehow she already knows that reading involves solving this whole letter "puzzle". In any case, she's making my goal of having her reading before entering kindergarten very attainable. ;-)
2 comments:
My friend recommended this book to me called Reading Magic by Mem Fox (she writes really neat kids books, too). One of the things she talks about is that reading doesn't have to be this drilled-in skill, that it can be acquired by games and just being exposed to it similarly to how spoken language is learned. So, if you make sure to read to your kid every day, and especially if you talk about the words and letters and play games with them as you read, many kids will just "pick up" how reading works and start doing it. Pretty neat. =)
I have to allow some credit to fall in my direction for this... I get BORED reading the same thing over and over and over and over and over... so I started changing things up - pointing out pictures, letters, etc in the books we were reading. I was actually inspired by an entrepreneur I met recently who's doing interactive children's books on the iPad.
Also, the first song I was able to come up with as a new dad was the alphabet song... I've turned it into a 'nursery rhyme' and something that sooths her to sleep.
I love my little reader.
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