Reading

I haven't blogged since January. That doesn't mean I didn't think about lots of things to share with you all. It's just that doing those things got in the way of reflecting on them and uploading photos and videos to share (sorry, Grandma!).

Usually, I try to blog about things I don't want to forget, which almost always involve Caleb. Remember when I told you about his ABC Obsession? Well, the consequence is that he loves to "read."

I put that in quotation marks for several reasons. First, the child has an uncanny memory and wants to read a story five times - not just once. Second, he has sight words that he nails all the time and never tries sounding them out, words like: and, the, with, for, it. The other reason I qualify the use of the word "read" is because he is still working on sounding out letter combinations and grouping sounds.

Regardless of what constitutes independent reading, we're amazed. He's going to be three in August and has been "reading" since he was two and a half. Before you start feeling bad that your child doesn't sit in a corner with a book, listing every letter on the page and then going back to sound them out, you shouldn't. In my mind, this is the result of an obsessive personality focused on letters. We didn't do anything special with Caleb. This is just a part of who he is.

That doesn't mean that we don't encourage his love of letters and words. We certainly do. Ms. Tomi, who watches him three times a week, takes him to the library for a fresh load of books once a week and is willing to read the same story to him three times in a row (not happening with this momma).

My parents keep him supplied with fun new reads too. Like this one:

                                  

It probably helps that we don't have a t.v. and our down time looks like this:

Before you start wondering how socially awkward our two year old is and whether he talks with a British accent and goes to local book readings and quotes scripture memory verses at anyone who looks his way, you should know that he also does things like this too:

We love this kid. It's such a joy to be his momma.