She Reads!

Well, not quite yet... but starting to anyway!  Right before Christmas, Sarah started showing alot of interest in her ABCs, numbers, and reading... and begging to stay at school with Caleb.  Since starting something new right before a busy season is not a great idea for mama's sanity, I chose to wait until after the first of the year to begin working on a schedule with her.  We've been toying with her calendar for a while, and she's been counting to almost 20 and singing her alphabet almost right for quite some time now, but its all been stuff she's picked up from playing and not really schooling.  So, here we are at the beginning of the year and Tuesday morning we started working on some "scheduled learning" of her interests.

Everyone loves flashcards.  Now, I could go out and buy those fancy expensive ones.... or I could grab a few index cards and make my own.  The advantages of making my own, besides the obvious reason of the cost, is that I can create words specifically for Sarah and there are no flashy pictures to distract from or hint at the word.  This is also the way I taught Caleb to read, starting with a few words that I choose, a few words the child chooses and then keep adding to the collection as they master the words.

The words I choose are everyday words for us, a verb, and the word "and" to start with; among her first ten words are Sarah Rose, Caleb, Mommy, Daddy, I, loves and and.  Then she got to pick out three words of her own to round out the ten: apple, book, and pumpkin.  She's going to be the only two year old that can read pumpkin, but that's what she wanted! 

I pick a verb (loves) so we can make sentences and she can start "reading like a big girl" right away.  I pick the word "and" so we can keep adding words to the sentence to make it longer. I remember when Caleb picked his words many moons ago, he picked the words tractor, jeep, pig, cow, etc., so I chose "fed" and "drives" along with "loves" as the verbs so we could make sentences.  You get the idea!  Here, she's reaidng "Sarah Rose loves Caleb and Daddy."  We can keep rearranging the cards to make several sentences. 

But reading isn't only about sight words!  A child has to be given the knowledge to learn and decipher words for themselves, too, to become well rounded readers.  So we also work on phonics.  Again, all homemade; with a piece of paper and a felt tip marker, she has her letter for the day that we discuss.

I'm kinda concerned about the baby... looks a bit jaundice-y to me!

One proud little girl!

And we're more strict about the time we spend on calendar time, too.

This is new!  Sarah does a really good job recognizing letters and saying her ABCs.  But we need to tweak it to perfection.  And since she loves Strawberry Shortcake, I used that theme to peak her interest.  The picture is one I colored and cut out from a coloring book and the strawberries I cut out have the alphabet on them.  We can do all kinds of things with these! Right now, I mix up the strawberries and she has to put them in order.  But later, we'll learn vowels, beginning sounds, ending sounds, spell out words, etc. all from just these simple cut out letters!

But Sarah Rose has some other fun things to do to fill up her day, too!  Here are a few of her escapades:

On this particular day, she was Super Sarah!  (Yes, that is a baby towel with a hood she uses as a cape!)

And her trusty sidekick was one of her Strawberry Shortcake dolls.

And here she is coloring in her Strawberry Shortcake coloring book with her Strawberry Shortcake movie from the library close by.
Are you sensing a theme yet?
Knowing something that she likes is going to make choosing a theme to decorate her birthday cake so much easier!

And she occasionally plays piano with me.  Which is great because I get a chance to instill my love of Southern Gospel in her!  We can really get going!

And we sometimes paint things....

...and she's always putting something to sleep.  Most of the time its one of her babies, but I guess on this particular day the stick horse was in need of a nap!

When Caleb started school last Fall, I was a little concerned about what we were going to do all day long.  But, as you can see, we do stay busy!