1/27/11 - Reading

Nathan can read.  I'm constantly amazed at how well he can read.  Rich is convinced that he will be reading at a 2nd grade level by the time he's 4 and I'm not so sure about that.  Of course, he was also convinced that he would be reading words fairly well by the time he was 3...and here we are. He trounces over words like cat, top, pet, stop etc... He can read multi-syllabic words with little to no help.  He needs help when there is a weird rule involved like silent e making a long vowel.  But my boy can pretty much read....and he LOVES it.

Nathan has always loved words...since the moment when he was 9 months old and learned the word "no"...language was his best friend. It got him the things he wanted and kept him from the things he didn't. He immediately soaked words up like a sponge...wanted to know what everything was called.  By the time he was 15 months he had a vocabulary of over 100 words.  I thought it would just even out...but once he learned all of the words in the world around him, his focus turned to letters.  He wanted to know the sounds they made...his favorite was the letter y.  When he was 2 he was starting to read words like no, mommy, daddy, bed.  There were several memorized words in his repertoire. Now, it seems that almost no words are off limits. He'll try to read anything and gets so excited when he can. 

He has also started spelling words on his own. I find this fascinating and wonderful.  The way the brain works is just amazing. He has pretty much mastered the concept that letters create sounds and these sounds create words...so he is now deconstructing it and working backwards thinking "what can I spell?"  His fine motor skills are far behind his understanding, so he does this activity on our refrigerator door.   Here, in today's picture, he has successfully figured out how to spell his own name....completely on his own.  Can you tell I'm proud and amazed?