Learning to Read

About a month ago, we bought Elina a set of BOB books to see if she'd be interested in reading at all. See, my dream wasn't to have Elina read early or anything...my dream was to have Elina learn to read and to love it. It didn't matter to us whether we taught her to read or if a teacher taught her to read....as long as she loved it.

Before Elina turned 4, she was really great at rhyming, so I thought I would try to teach her a few words using rhymes. One of my friends in Portland had managed to teach her son to read like that, so I figured I could try it. We only did the -AT words, like cat and fat. She was starting to recognize the words fine, but I slowly realized that she was only recognizing them because she had memorized the order they appeared on the easel. Sometimes I would mix up a word or two and she would always get caught up. So after that I let up on trying to teach her to read. I just felt like she wasn't really "getting it" and I didn't want to push it. I wanted her to build phonemic awareness, not memorize a bunch of words.

So now come the BOB books. They're really simple books with hand-drawn pictures that slowly introduce letters and rhymes. Elina needed a lot of help reading the first 4 books. She could make all the sounds in the words, but she couldn't put them together to form a word. I have to admit, I got really frustrated because I didn't understand how she could make all the sounds and not figure out what the word was. It would usually go something like this--

Elina: [seeing the word "and"] aaaaa..nnnnn...ddddd
Me: Ok, try to say the sounds more together and a little faster.
Elina: aaa...nnn...ddd
Me: Good, now faster.
Elina: aaa..nnn..ddd [still not putting the sounds together, just saying them separately faster]
Me: Ok, do it again, but remember to do it faster.
Elina: aaa..nnn..ddd [same thing as before]
Me: You almost have it! What does it sound like you're saying? It's a word we use all the time.
Elina: aaa..nnn..ddd....aaa..nnn..ddd [still not getting it, but looking desperate]...ummm...arm!
Me: Elina, there's no "r" sound and no "m" sound in the word you are trying to read.
Elina: Oh.

She had a lot of trouble in the beginning and I was slowly losing patience. So we slowed down the pace at which we were reading the books because I didn't want her to not enjoy reading the books just because I couldn't hold it together! B told me I needed to settle down (since he is the calm one). He told me, "If she could blend those sounds the way you want her to, then she would already be reading!" Hmmm...I had never thought about it that way. So I learned to calm down. I let her sound things out, but then I showed her how to blend the sounds a little and to hear the words.

Then something happened during Book 5 of the series. She started to get it. She would sound the words out a few times, then she'd sit there and think, and then she'd say the right word. I was amazed and she was amazed! We just looked at each other in shock. It was so funny. I actually had tears in my eyes when she started to get it.

She still isn't the best at blending sounds together, but she's really good at listening to the sounds to figure out what word it should be. It's really amazing to watch her figure it out. She definitely still needs help, but she's getting there. We're just so proud of her!! Now she'll pick up BOB books on her own to read and she can't just wait to finish another book all on her own. What a big girl!

In these videos, I taped her reading Book 6 for the first time. You can hear how she's sounding things out and figuring out what words are on the page.


This second video shows how independent Elina wants to be. Whenever she thinks she knows something, she interrupts my attempts to help with, "Mommy, I know." She does this with reading and with piano. So in this video, she thinks the word "hid" is "hit," but then she figures it out with some help.