reading progress

Esme has begun to bring me story books again, and we have sat down and read them together. She sees Daddy and Mama reading all day - so she wants to get into this world, too -- and Mama is happy to spend time doing it, all good incentives. She is also in love with the WordWorld DVD we bought her and plays her Starfall website beside Daddy when he is coding his programming. All of that leads up to this...

Last night she read the phrase 'I think you go(t) up on the //' before she stopped and told me to read the rest of the sentence. She said 'go' instead of 'got.' and the rest of the sentence I did read for her 'wrong side of the bed this morning.' She is picking up a lot of the little in-between words on the new areas of Starfall they introduced this year. It also helps that these are the same 'I Can Read' books that I grew up with -- Dr.Seuss, 'Three to Get Ready' Mary Boegehold and similar books. I need to get her Little Bear book out again and add it into the mix again. I've also put a bid on a 'Dick and Jane' type 1960s basic reader on Ebay. I'll see if I can get one of those really simple books she hasn't seen before - and that will give me a better gauge of where she is while being a new fun book, too.

I have the next two days off, but they will be busy ones. We will be going to Camden today and to Jackson to get Grandpa tomorrow. Esme and I also have to 'write' thank you notes to her aunt and great-aunt for their birthday presents received in the mail yesterday. I'll write them for her and let her read them with me from the card - we did that with the invitations and she thought it was 'cool man.' She is getting more confident writing a few single letters at a time, too - but sometimes prefers to write the word in reverse order. She is still upset about 'E's... which is unfortunate because her name has two of them in it! Time will fix that...

Her work last night:

words 'hat' and 'ant'
writing letter practice 4 years old
red 'HAT' is mine, rest is hers

We did the reading and writing for about a half hour at night, stopping and going onto something else when her attention started to drift for more than a moment at a time. In small bites like this, I am becoming more confident we can really do the 'homeschool thing' and have her learn what she needs to out of it -- instill ability and curiosity enough to be able to read books on her own, ask questions and further direct us to what she really wants to know about. If I can establish that as a trend in the next two years (August 2013 is the first Kindergarten testing date she qualifies for) we might just go the whole way with homeschooling.

//notes//
Articles like this one too early for homeschooling make me wonder, but the author consistently talks about the child 'not catching on' or 'drudgery'.... It's not drudgery, and she IS catching on. So....? Plus we DO take time to plant a garden, chase a cat, paint a car, string beads, cook soup and lots of other things anyway. And I am not 'sitting her down at the books' and drilling her, nor asking her to do worksheet after worksheet. It is all very loose and open-ended and based on curiosity and the moment. Yes, there will be a time for more stringent application - but I hope even during her 'official K' if we do so for homeschooling that it won't require sitting down in one place 'forever' and doing worksheets. There has to be a better way than that with young children.

But, one conclusion for today might be to take Esme to the craft section with her birthday money and see what supplies she finds interesting enough to bring home. That sounds like fun :)