trucking along

Miller's "trucking along" on his journey towards becoming an early reader. This past summer, we started memorizing the Dolche PreK sight word list. He mastered a stack of printed index cards mostly based on sight, which I thought was pretty good for a four year old. As long as we reviewed them nightly, his photographic memory managed to store away each word. I really wanted him to start applying phonics skills for word attack skills though. So, slowly he has been blending phonics patterns and is a beginning reader. I just love to watch him touch each letter and make its sound. It's amazing to watch the wheels turn inside his little brain as he connects the letter to its sound. It helps to have Miss C's support at school as she is pulling Miller and two other beginning readers for a small group session each day.

Being the child of a teacher, M gets a double dip of reading in the afternoon. We are in the Pre-Kindergarten groove of things around here. Although, I really feel like his days resemble a day in grade school.  Our routine keeps me accountable to working with Miller. Every afternoon Grant and Miller run around our yards while we wait 30 minutes for the big kids to get off the bus on our street. Then, all the elementary kids rush home to do "homework". Well, since M doesn't get assigned homework yet, I use it as an excuse to give him a structured mini lesson. It keeps him accountable to know that all his buddies are doing work inside. We either do word work with foam letters or tiles, or practice handwriting from our Handwriting Without Tears workbook.

He loves digging around in my school bag to find different treasures. I'm tutoring a group of first graders this year, and knew that Miller would benefit from using these sight word activities. Today we worked on the digraph "th". Love seeing this just "roll" off his tongue. Manipulating the letters with a hands on approach has been a really successful approach. He has some letter reversals, but I'm  so proud of him for reading these words all by his four year old self.

After each spelled & sounded out word is read, Miller oh-so-cutely drives the truck off the table complete with sound effects. He's really into the truck driving thing. If he didn't want to be a daddy so badly for his occupation, I know he would choose to drive a truck as a close second. When we tell him that he can be both if he wants to, it just doesn't connect.

All grown up...and reading!

More reversals...

Today, we moved on to fun letter tiles for word families. Miller had fun with the _ am family.

He came up with a "ram"...with horns he added. And, because he is a silly goose at times and loves to come up with nonsense words for attention & laughs......Miller came with several nonexistent words. Hey, as long as he can sound them out, I'm fine with a few randoms.

He called this his superhero word.  Batman, maybe? Add an "h" and it's the wham band.

Such a joy to watch the words come together for Miller man. We are enjoying our afternoons together. I hope he still enjoys working with me next year.