Guess We Can't Spell Words Out That We Don't Want Her to Hear Anymore

Since I don't want to leave a bit of a bummer post up top for too long, here's some exciting news: Fiona picked the middle of our move to learn to read.

On the Friday before we left New York, with our house covered in boxes, Fiona pulled out a few books she wanted to read with her mother. Andrea read her the first one, and Fiona "read" the second one (it was a book she had memorized and she didn't look at the words). When Andrea made a gentle comment after Fiona said she had read it, Fiona decided to prove her mother wrong (always a good motivator).

She proceeded to read the first three pages of Good Night, Little Bear, a book which was actually the subject of an old post here. It's really a book that's meant to be read by the parent to the child--pages with paragraphs full of text and words like "night" and "across." Kids are supposed to read Dr. Seuss type books first--books where the rhythm and rhyme help them find their way--but Fiona struggled through three pages until she decided she'd had enough.

The big step was recognizing how to sound out words. We've worked with her on that before, but things finally clicked in the past two weeks, and while she still has trouble with vowels (she'll sound out the word "has" as "his", for example) she's really gotten the hang of it. She can read most two and three letter words she comes across and is clearly recognizing words like "the" without having to sound them out.

A few nights ago on our way to a restaurant I made a crack about how our dinner was going to be at the "Super Store", which was the name of one of a rundown establishment along the side of the road where we were stopped at a red light. There were a bunch of other stores in the vicinity as well, but Fiona instantly replied that there was only one other car parked at that store--which means she was able to figure out exactly which store I was talking about by looking at the words on the signs.

Oh, and in an irony my family will particularly appreciate, Fiona really enjoys reading The Pop-Up Mice of Mr. Brice. The second page has 26 doors, one for each mouse from A to Z, and Fiona enjoys figuring out all the short sentences like "Ann is in" and "Waldo went." Much like her aunt did when she was four-and-a-half and had just moved to a new house, as I recall.