storytime

it's great having a big sister who can read!

this girl

she continues to amaze us. you would think that having a degree in early childhood education and working in this field with 3-6 year olds for over 10 years would mean that not much would surprise me. but when it's your own child.....it's all pretty much amazing.

we all know that our girl can read. i mean, READ. like chapter books. it's crazy.
and she can compose words with the moveable alphabet at school, using wooden letters to "write" words.
but now she is starting to put pen (marker) to paper and actually physically write. STORIES.

she didn't want me to take a picture of her story, but i had to. the part in black says, "one day a princess climbed a tree and fell and a prince saved her"
look closely. very closely. and you can see some of the words. "wun da"(one day) are the first two words. and you can see "tee" at the end of the first line (tree). and the last few letters in black say "sav hr" (save her).
yes, she's got a ways to go to get from phonetic spelling to conventional. but give her a break. she just turned four.
we think she's amazing.
even with green crayon on her teeth and mucus running out of her nose.

natural reader

sound and letters have been greta's 'thing' for some time now. when she was little, she was constantly asking us what the sound and name of letters was. by the time she was 2 or so, she knew the names and sounds of every letter in the alphabet. she was able to memorize parts of books and repeat them easily. after she started school this year and started composing words with the Moveable Alphabet, she began to read. she was able to read 3-letter, phonetic words (cat, mud, tin, etc). we checked a set of early readers (BOB books) out of the library, and she could read them. however, she wasn't all that interested and would get frustrated easily. i mean, come on, she had just turned 3 and was READING. so we let it be. we knew she was getting the stimulation at school to encourage her skills, so we just let it be. this was tough for me, but i knew it was best not to push.
lately, we have noticed her reading words more and more. words in books, on signs, cereal boxes, everywhere. so when school let out this summer, i thought we'd check out those BOB books again and see what she thought this time. these books are very simple text, starting out with one or two words on a page.
so....we're at the library. i'm looking for the simple books when greta says, "hey! we have these books at my school!" and points to another set of books. also early readers, mostly phonetic, but definitely more advanced. she pulls them out and starts reading them. not sounding them out, not that halted, slow reading that beginning readers do. but READING THEM. flying through them. my jaw dropped.
so we checked them out. and she read all ten of them as soon as we got home. and it was like a gate was opened....and she (and we) realized she could read. and now she's reading everything. in the first video below she is reading a book from that set of books from the library. the second two videos, she is reading the book 'big dog little dog'. two things about the video....first, sorry for the HORRIBLE fuzziness of the video. and also, i left out the middle section of the book that she read. so if you're trying to follow the plot of the book, you might be a bit puzzled. :)
and tonight at bedtime she read a 'frog and toad' story. she still needs help with words but she has an amazing ability to remember words.

i know everyone thinks their own kid is the smartest, the cutest, etc. and i know i'm her mom, but as an educator i am also truly amazed by greta's skills. everybody has their something....i think this is hers.

bedtime

our kids love books.
i love that otto loves to read. currently he likes to read 10 little ladybugs and moo baa la la la.
greta loves books too. she is currently into the books olivia, blue goose, and she has been enjoying using her bookmark to mark the stories in frog and toad.

reading

my own magazine

so the flash broke on our camera....so there won't be too many pictures of the kids while joe is away. unless it's really sunny. this picture is a little dark, sorry.
we picked up a free copy of high five magazine (put out by highlights...remember highlights?) at the doctor's office. it's a magazine for toddlers and greta loves it. i might have to get her a subscription, but so far she seems content to read the same issue over and over. you should hear her say "mag-a-ZEEN!"