Few things are more exciting for parents than seeing their kids read independently. It may seem mundane to watch a 15 year old pick up a book and read, but it is so exciting for a 5 year old!
Bentley is in pre-Kindergarten this year and has studied the alphabet as well as patterns, numbers, etc. The fact that he could recognize most of the alphabet letters by name at age 3 was a good sign. Now at age 5 in pre-Kindergarten he is learning to read and is having a lot of fun doing it. This week is the second week of reading challenge in which he is supposed to read 200 (!) books before end April 16. In the first two weeks he already hit 112 so he on target. While reading to him I thought it would be good for him to read too, so I dug up the "Bob" books we got to teach reading and he started reading those. They turn out to be a great complement to the school program. The school books he is reading rely on repetition and use longer words like "leaves" and spell numbers like "four." This works in a repetitive system since the student recognizes the sounds and pattern and reads accordingly, but they cannot actually make out the words from the spelling of them. However, the Bob books are very rudimentary and use simple words with consistent vowels that are easy to sound out like the first book: "Sam sat. Mat sat. Mat sat on Sam." etc. Both systems in tandem are great! It is so exciting to have Bentley read and hear him sound out the words letter by letter. He also jokes around and "misreads" just to tease his dad!