About a week ago we were sitting at the table having an afternoon snack when my 23 month old says, “Fruit snacks makes a fancy dinner.”
What 23 month old says such things? Besides, I don’t say such things. I was wondering where in the world he would pick up something like that. We don’t watch TV. How curious.
This afternoon we were working on Reading Bear and I decided to review short “A” words with him. We come across the word ham. The woman says, “Ham makes a fancy dinner.” My son says, “No, fruit snacks makes a fancy dinner.”
James told me once he was going for “an 'venture in the wide wide world” it took me days to figure out where he learnt that from. It comes from the poky little puppy book.
I thought it was really cute too. It is curious what sticks in their little minds to pull out and use later.
@ Daddude - We didn’t use ReadingBear at first. When my little guy was 18-19 months - it just wasn’t his thing, I’m not sure what happened but he has fallen in love with Readie bear. We do it everyday sometimes a couple times a day. We are using several programs but he begs and begs. I was really worried I was going to have to finish those Flesch exercises I started, but he’s so taken with the program that I don’t think it will be necessary. He has even named one his his bears Readie Bear.
Baby E. is now 21 months and he’s the same way. When he was 10 months, he was OK with Reading Bear but it wasn’t quite his bag; he tolerated it and even liked it, but only in small doses. Then when he was, say, 14 or 16 months, he started to like it and we could do it several times a week. Then in the last month or so he comes up to me and begs “Reading Bear!” (or “Beah! Beah!”) all the time, so we’re watching a few times a day.
I’m seeing the same thing happen with E. that happened with H., at about the same age. (E. is a little more advanced now than H. was at least in his decoding and overall language ability, although H. liked books more and could handle and sit still for more advanced books.) I’m seeing the pattern again where E. gets very focused on the words and the pronunciations and, while he learns how to speak, he learns how to read. Since we started Reading Bear more systematically, his vocabulary and ability to articulate have both improved hugely; he’s speaking much more in sentences now, too. Sometimes, we try the “Sound it out fast” or even “Let me sound it out” presentations," but we still use the “Sound it out slowly” presentations, and he participates by saying the word as soon as he can figure it out. H. was the same way, although we were using flash cards. I would start sounding out a word; if it was difficult, I might have to sound it out a couple times, and then he’d produce the whole word. Later, I’d start sounding it out, and he’d immediately say the word before I could finish. Finally, I didn’t have to sound it out at all, he’d just see brand new words, illustrating brand new rules, and say them. He was at that stage by the time we got to the rules in Reading Bear presentation #20 or so.
You described the same process we are going through with Reading Bear - but I have to ask him what it says. How often do you show a presentation before you are done with it? P. can actually say the words if they are sounded out slowly on the first shot. I have all the “a” words in LR file and he can read them there without me saying anything. He won’t read them in Reading Bear unless he’s asked. I want him to understand the process of sounding out words but I suspect by the 20th presentation he will figure it out. He’s already pretending to do it on his own.
James did a reading bear related thing today. He jiggled daddy’s belly and said “this man is very fat”. I think he did another thing that might be reading bear related. He climbed into my lap and said. “the mama has her baby in her lap”
So cute! Yes, the fat man and far belly has gotten us into trouble… He now mentions fat people when he sees them. “That man has a fat belly.” To which I say in his ear, “Yes, I know. Shhh.”
LOL,the fat man thing happened to me too a couple of times, it was so embarrassing that I run away with the shopping cart (hoping nobody heard anything). I am afraid now that every time he sees s.o fat, he will say that famous sentence lol
@ DadDude, are there any updates regarding new RB presentations?
Well, now there are 32 presentations posted. When H. was reading up to this point, he really didn’t need the cards. At that point, when I showed him new cards, he would come out with the words without me sounding them out and even without me telling him about the rule that we were learning.
We’re going to have another 6 posted by next Tuesday the 24th, or maybe the 27th anyway. We should have all 50 posted sometime in August.
@sonya, we aren’t “done” with any presentations yet. We won’t be truly done until he is reliably reading all the words quickly and confidently. At least, that’s the method I used with H. and it seems to be working more or less with E., too. I let E. pick which of the first five he wants to tackle. He’s been very much into the “pot” presentation (“short o”) so he has mastered many of those words. He knows many others, and can usually blend words even after one slow sounding-out. But the whole idea, I think, is that phonics is cumulative. So I want to make sure he has the first five (short vowel) sounds down very well. By the time he has the first five down cold, then it’ll be a lot easier to pick up new rules. That’s how it was with H. The first several presentations, when they’re still figuring how letters generally hook up with sounds and figuring how to go from sounding out to blending, are the hardest.
We’re going through the whole “Sound It Out Slowly” presentations first a few times, then when that seems to be getting easy/boring, when start going through them at “Sound It Out Quickly,” and then go to the A, B, C etc. parts of the presentations and have him try them at “Let Me Sound It Out.” He can do the latter pretty well with A and B of “short o.”
We’re being pretty low-key and unsystematic about it. But that was also our approach with H. (believe it or not).
@ DadDude, Thanks, that makes sense. P. is pretty good at putting words together after sounding them out once. And he can memorize things very quickly. It usually takes one or two showings of a word in LR and he knows it. It appears that he has about a 75% retention rate with words that he read early on in LR and hasn’t seen for awhile - but once he’s reminded he seems to retain it. We’re probably going to have to use the sound it out slowly multiple times so I make sure he is grasping what is going on and not just memorizing.
