P-man's Evolution as a Reader...thus far... Part 2

I am not going to lie. I have been dreading writing this next part of P-man's evolution as a reader. You see, after learning the nursery rhymes, the alphabet, and memorizing stories we read, the next step in P-man's reading evolution involved something I fear the literary world will look down on me for. It involves me allowing P-Man to (I can't believe I'm about to say this) watch a DVD. Not just one time, a lot of times. Dare I say, for awhile around age 3 1/2, it was daily. P-man's next milestone was learning the letter sounds, and he did it thanks to the LeapFrog DVD 'Letter Factory'. P-man loves all 35 minutes of it. I felt justified in letting P-man watch it so darn much when I learned that they have staff with PhD's in education creating the content. Honestly though, we let P-man watch more TV and movies than I think is recommended. Don't start thinking we are the kind of family who doesn't ever have the TV on except for news time. We are not that family.

I don't remember exactly where the DVD came from. Did I purchase it or had it been a gift? Regardless, the results were amazing. Soon P-man started pointing out letters to me and telling me what sound they made. He would find letters on signs while we were driving. He would point out a letter on a door at the doctor's office or a restaurant. It was amazing to see how aware he was of words all around him.

The DVD that really did the trick!

I took advantage of his new enthusiasm towards letter sounds during our nighttime reading. I looked for simple, three-letter words in our stories and showed him how each letter's sound could be put together to make a word. We started doing this right around his 4th birthday last August. Very shortly afterwards, I'd say sometime in  November, the next major milestone hit, and it caught us completely off guard.

It started one day while we were in the car. We came up to a stop sign and from the back seat P-man said, "Hey Mom, that sign says 'Stop'." Now, most children by age 4 know that a red octagon on a street corner means stop, so I just said, "That's right," and continued driving. I didn't give it much thought until the second instance a few days later. It was also in the car, and I had a witness with me (my mom). We were going through the drive-thru at McDonald's and from the backseat we heard P-man say, "Mom, that sign says 'Pay Here'." Mom and I looked at each other in slight disbelief. I had never even noticed the sign, let alone pointed it out to P-man. I said, "That's right P, how did you know that?" He replied, "I read it." I knew from our practice at home that he was beginning to know basic sight words like 'the' and 'and', but 'pay here' was a step beyond what I had heard from him before. It was truly like a switch in his brain got flipped and all of a sudden connecting letter sounds to make words made complete and utter sense to him. Back at home with our chicken nuggets, we began pointing to words and asking P-man what they said. He was able to accurately tell us more often then not., just so long as there weren't any difficult letter blends or funky vowel sounds. It was amazing. One day he couldn't read, the next he could. By Christmas he was reading bedtime stories to me. I can't even express the pride I felt and still feel today.

Now I wish I could go back and pay better attention to that point where sounding out words started. Was it something he just woke up doing one day? I sure can't remember what it was like for me, but I do know that I was an early reader too. For me, being read to every day as a child had the greatest impact. I like to think the same is true for P-man. We obviously let him, and now Wes-Wes, watch movies and TV. And there is a busy day here and there when we just don't get around to reading before they fall asleep. Overall, we do read, and talk, and tell stories a lot at our house, and I think the boys are better off for it. Hopefully when Wes-Wes gets to the point where he begins to read I will be more aware of it happening. Chances are that light switch will just flip, and I will beam just as brightly as I did with P-man.