Proud Momma!

When Blake was beginning to focus on clearing up his speech issues we started by focusing on the letter sounds in isolation. The teacher in me said that the best way to do this was to teach him this in a way that would help him later with reading. At the time, he already knew most of the letters names by sight so I decided to teach him the sign for each letter. We focused on correctly articulating the letter sound when I showed him the sign. We then began adding a word that began with that sound. Blake learned this quickly and has been fascinated with letters and sounds since.

In the last few weeks he has really be focusing on seeing words and trying to sounds them out. He says each letter sound and tries hard to figure out what it says. Sadly our language makes this hard unless you are looking at simple words, but it doesn't stop him from trying!

Last night the boys and I got out markers and paper and decided to draw some pictures. I was drawing a picture of a flower and Blake asked to help. He colored in some of the petals and I was actually surprised at how well he did at coloring in the lines (ok almost in the lines). Blake doesn't color very often so I didn't know he was working on mastering that skill all on his own. When we were done I asked him what flower started with. He then told me "F says /f/ for flower". He then wrote the F on the paper. I asked him what other sounds do you hear... he told me /a/ and /r/ that is the word you see at the top of the picture. He then spelled and wrote "Mommy" (I helped him write the lower case "m"'s and the "y").

Blake then decided to draw a picture of his own. He decided to draw a picture of Henry, from Thomas the Tank Engine. He told me that the wheels were circles and that the body was like a rectangle. He then went on to add the smoke stack, whistle and face. He asked me to help him write Henry. I decided to see how much he could do on his own so I just said the word slowly, the same way I would when teaching my kindergartners to use inventive spelling. The word at the top of his paper is "Hnre". He then decided to write Thomas at the bottom and as you can see with the exception of the "h" he got the whole word.

I can honestly say I was very proud and a bit surprised. I knew he knew his letter sounds but I had kindergartners who struggled with this concept. I am continually amazed at what he can do and the fact that he does this because he wants to not because I'm forcing him to do school things.