Discovering Reading

My daughter is learning to read. For a couple of years, she has been great at picking out store and brand names. She has also learned her name and can pick it out among the variations.

But, she is starting to recognize sight words. She surprised me two weeks ago by knowing how to read her colors. She brought me a color by number page in a coloring book and crayons. I figured I'd color a line under each word so she could do it independently. As I look at it she says, 4 is pink. With some encouragement she recognized red, blue, orange, green, and yellow as well.

It is a tough road, because she has a wonderful memory and can remember a story the second time you read it which means I'm constantly searching for new reading material.

Last year for Christmas, my mother-in-law got her a subscription to Highlights High Five Magazine. Each month she gets a new issue. Each issue has stories, hidden pictures, a recipe, silly pictures, a game, and more. For the beginning of the year, she was not too interested in the magazine, but lately has been devouring them. Yesterday, she was searching each magazine to check out the recipe and decide if she liked it. We made peanut-butter honey dip for bananas yesterday.

We were just reading a story and she wants to read it, but she also keeps looking to the pictures to figure out the words. I'll point to a word & ask her what it says and she moves her eyes up to look at the picture. She is starting to figure out to at least look at the first letter to match the picture with a letter.

I am also figuring out, that we need to carve reading into some part of the day other than nap or bedtime. At those times, she tells me she is too tired & I should just read it.