My baby can read!

Any wonder why I love to snuggle up and watch movies or read with this boy? He really is a snuggle bug.

He learned how to read this week. Life is totally different now for him. It all started last Friday. He has known the letters and the sounds each letter makes for quite some time, but he just never wanted to learn how to put them all together. But last Friday was his magic moment, where for some reason he was ready. I wrote some easy 3-letter words for him, and he made each sound slowly, and then faster, and then when he realized he had actually read a word, he would just start laughing. He thought it was hilarious! I wrote more and more words, and he read every one of them. I pulled out some letter tiles we have, and I made words that he could read. Then we pulled out the Bob books. He thought it was cool to read words made from tiles, but he thought it was amazing when he read a whole book. By yesterday, he could read Hop on Pop--at least most of the words. We still have some lessons to learn about "the magic E" and "the spy L", but he is well on his way.

With all 7 of our kids it has been the same. They knew letters but did not want to learn to read. And then one day, BAM! They figured out how to hook the letters together, and it was magic. With all of them it started with letter magnets or tiles, then the Bob books. Next we move on to Hop on Pop, and then Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane books are amazing as the next step toward reading. Simple words that repeat in order to produce mastery. I love them. Sure, some sentences can cause you to giggle, but they are great progressive books. Somewhere along the way, we throw in Green Eggs and Ham, Fox in Sox, The Cat in The Hat and Ten Apples Up On Top. It has been so fun to be with each of the kids as they had their eyes opened up to the world of reading.

Most of you know that I have a degree in teaching. I knew in college that if my kids were ever going to learn how to read, I had to teach them before they went to school, because they were never going to get it from school with all the garbage they were teaching me. I got my degree in 1993, and I remember sitting through classes in college where I thought, "What the heck? How's a kid supposed to read if you don't teach them to sound out words?" And also, "How is a kid supposed to learn how to spell something if you are forbidden from telling him that he did it incorrectly?" This was the philosophy of the early '90s, and is still the accepted curriculum in many districts. Ever seen The Music Man? The "Think Method" was a crock, and that's what I was taught in college.... Just show the kids pretty books, and they will feel happy and the words will just enter their minds as they guess what is going on from the pictures. We were taught to not encourage them to sound out words, but that if they didn't know a word they were to look at the pictures and make a guess as to what that word was. I actually had a professor tell us that Dr. Seuss books were the worst books for kids and should be banned from schools. His illustrations were apparently not epic enough to keep the interest of children so that this "Think Method" could work its magic. A bunch of hooey.

To all those idiot professors I had in college, I thumb my nose at you, in honor of Dr. Seuss whose books are brilliant and imaginative. If the professors thought that Dr. Seuss books were bad, you can imagine how they felt about Dick and Jane...