he can read

A friend of mine, Auntie T, as she's affectionately called around our house shared a wonderful blog resource for fun activities to add to our summer school mornings. It's a wonderful resource for ideas on mixing up our activities at home. The blog author calls it "tot school". When I first dove into the site, it's a little overwhelming. Not to mention, it makes you feel like a second rate mom when you see ALL she does for her kids. I keep telling myself, she must have a maid, a chef, and a personal assistant for errands

http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/

All of this to say, it inspired me to get the ball rolling with Miller man in the reading department. After all, He's been showing reading readiness signs for months...He's mastered his sounds, he's been identifying logos, signs, designers and slogans on shirts as a toddler. He holds a book right side up and has a great desire to look at picture books. This kid loves to be read to during the day and at night...he can't get enough! With one click on the "You Can Read" tab on her blog, I was inspired to create a program for Miller. Then I came across this site.

http://www.kidzone.ws/dolch/preschool.htm.

 We kicked off our "reading camp" this month with great success. I printed the Dolch PreK (pre-primer) sight word list on 3x5 cards and have introduced 5 words to Miller each day. I used these words in my classroom so I don't know why it didn't occur to me to use them with my tutoring tot. Miller used each mastered word orally in his own sentences which helped him form connections.  Repetition is the key. We review for 5 minutes here and there throughout the day. Last week, I put together the mastered words in phrases and sentences and the result was jaw dropping to me. Little man was able to read each word that formed the sentence & comprehended what the sentence said. He is a beginning reader! It was a little awkward at first, but when he read the phrase silently for 10 seconds and touched each card he had great success. My next goal is to print off the noun picture cards to add to our sentence construction to mix things up a bit. I want to purchase or make a sight word memory game as an added challenge. We're just a little giddy around here!

He does great with sounding out initial and ending consonant sounds to figure out the word. He still needs some coaching & prompting to sound out the middle of a challenging word. For example: red & run...both three letters, both start with the "r" sound.... We compared the vowel sounds and he now sounds it out. I want to add all the colors & numbers to our PreK list to build greater fluency. Go Miller man! We're so proud of you.