The older kids have been reading quite a bit this summer. Margaret, in particular, can't be separated from a book. She came home from Grandma's and Grandpa's house last week stuck on the Harry Potter books (again). She is not only reading them, but reading them competitively. Last summer she had read the first and part of the second in that series. Perhaps inspired by her cousin Rebekah who was reading them last week, she started up again where she had left off. I have been getting regular progress updates.
"Mom, I finished another chapter."
"Mom, I have read 124 pages since breakfast."
"Mom, I have finished the second and third books already."
All of this has not been missed by John. John has been on the brink of reading for a number of months now. Through two years of preschool, he has learned all his letters and letter sounds. He is interested in stories, of course. And with James and Margaret absorbed in their own books, he desperately wants to figure out how to read to himself, as well. So yesterday and today, he took matters into his own hands.
"Mom, I am reading the first Harry Potter book!"
"You are?"
"Yes! And I have already read this much," he exclaimed, holding up a chunk of pages from the book.
Maggie was not anxious to let this bald-faced lie go unchallenged. "What just happened in the book, then John?" Undaunted, John gave a detailed report of the antics of Harry and Hagrid and a monster. (He apparently watched the movie at Grandma's house last week and could piece together some of the story to report.)
John's reading grew more and more flamboyant throughout the day.
"Mom, I just read 20 pages."
"Mom, I just read 100 pages."
"Mom, I just finished the first Harry Potter book. Will you please get the second one for me?"
"Wow, this book is really interesting. It just keeps getting interesting-er and more interesting-er."
"Mom, I finished the second book!" (Gleeful giggle.)
Finally, I asked John if he would like to actually start learning to read. "YES!"
Jeremy had actually picked up several second-hand, teach-your-child-to-read books some time earlier. I dug one out and worked through the first lesson. Unfortunately, this book/method insists on working through the lessons in order, and assumes starting with a student completely unfamiliar with the alphabet. John zoomed excitedly through Lesson 1, which involved recognizing and pronouncing the sound of letters "m" and "s."
Except, for the very last part of Lesson 1. This was a writing exercise. The student is not expected to work on penmanship, but rather practice writing letters as a way of practicing to recognize them. I was to show John how to properly draw the two letters, then have him copy my letters, then have him practice on his own. John could copy fine, but got upset when trying to write them on his own. As he added extra humps to the "m," he got flustered. As I tried to help him bring a line all the way to the bottom, he got bumped and collapsed into tears over his ruined "m." I decided that he was too tired and we would call it quits on the writing portion of the lesson. John, however, would not hear of it. He was done writing letter "m" and letter "s," certainly. But, he announced that he would instead use the paper to write a story. Since this is the first time (to my knowledge) that he wanted to write a story, I thought I would preserve it for posterity. I will also provide some translation assistance.
At the top of the page are John's attempts to copy my first "m." Then, you see his story. He made up the whole story, and had no help in "writing" it, other than occasionally asking how to spell a word. In those cases, I told him to sound it out and write what he heard.
What John largely wrote is a first letter for each word, though occasionally he added extra letters for middle or ending sounds. There is of course no observation of word or line breaks. John's story, then, reads:
Daddy is working for Mommy because he is taking Mom out to a show.
I kinda like the kid's style. Are you listening, Daddy?
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