A natural learning journey to reading

[Beatrice]

K is asking me how to spell words, and writing them down. Just like that, she knows how to write pretty much all of the letters, even though this is (to the best of my knowledge) the first time she's ever really written any of them. What's interesting is that she's started out not writing left-right, but dotting the letters all over the page, but she's now started doing it left-right without prompting.

I know it's just natural learning in action, but I'm still gobsmacked :rofl

[Beau]

Awesome....:) isn't it great?!!!

My 9 yr old picked up a book and decided to start reading one day. She has been to yr 1,2 and 3, but since homeschooling she decided when and how she would learn to read. She isn't reading much at the moment, but I read to them at night.

I love natural learning. :lol

[Ayla]

I love hearing about NL in action :D

[~*heket*~]

WOO HOO! Congratulations mini reader, and mother of mini reader :eager

[Ceres]

That is so exciting! This natural learning stuff really works! Isn't she so young to be reading too, much earlier than would be expected in preschool / kindy.

[Beatrice]

She's recognising some words so she's definitely on the way. I was just taken completely by surprise that she could form the letters so well solely from seeing them written - the last time she was writing, they were completely unformed. I'm still obviously in need of some deschooling :lol

ETA: my DH learnt at a similar age so it should be even less surprising...

[GreenGully]

Awesome!

[birthdance]

Wow, how exciting!

[Beatrice]

Time for an update!

She writes *heaps* these days, on anything she can find. The other day she wrote "I L U MUM" all over my foot in texta :D She's always asking me to spell things for her - and so is B, so half the time I feel like a walking dictionary :lol She's still pretty arbitrary about LtR or RtL - the other day when she was painting she painted everything LtR, then later when we were drawing with crayons she wrote them all RtL. And sometimes she goes round in a circle... It's fascinating to watch her letters become clearer, too.

:homed

[Ceres]

:lol yep it takes them a while to get that left to right thing. DS writes letters where ever he can find a space on the paper.

[~*heket*~]

I'm loving this journey :eager

Go mummy dictionary!!! :lol

[Beatrice]

I think I'm going to keep updating this thread so I have a record of this journey all in one spot :)

Today she gave me a little piece of paper she'd scribbled "1 2 3" on and asked me how to write "4". I wrote all 4 numerals for her on the top of the paper, and she asked me to keep writing til 10 but there wasn't room, so I wrote them for her, bigger, on the top of another sheet. She had a go, but asked me to draw them in dots for her, so I suggested printing and laminating these cards (http://www.janbrett.com/numbers/number_tracers_zero_to_ten.htm). She liked that idea :)

[~*heket*~]

they're cute cards!

[Sarasvati]

I need to remember them for when Kira is interested in writing.

[Beatrice]

K is still writing although not as intensely as she was for a while. She wrote down "K---- lost mouse nowhere" the other day and it was readable (provided you could assemble the letters for "nowhere" which were rather a jumble :lol).

She and DH have started playing a game where he made up a song for "C-A-T spells?" and then keeps changing the first sound. She's gotten the hang of it and is just about sounding it out herself when he gives her a new combination. I don't think he's tried her with a nonsense word yet to see if she's actually doing the sounding out or just remembering the words from prior repetitions but eh, I'm impressed :lol

And she goes around playing with the sounds of words and chunking them out, often for added emphasis. Like "Now, Mummy. Nuh-OW!" :lol If you don't do it already, start Spoonerising with your kids. It's an awesome way to familiarise them with this skill.

[Mama_Kaz]

Go K :eager Ya gotta love natural learning eh :eager


I love those cards and laminating them is a great idea! Thanks for that :D

[GreenGully]

oh lol I just KNOW J will love spoonerisms!

[Beatrice]

K has found her write-in wipe-off alphabet book and done some in that, and then decided she wants to learn how to write out dollars :lol There was some definite crunching of gears in my brain as I tried to explain the reason for the decimal place without completely confusing her :uhh

[Hush]

:D at 4 - amazing!

[Jasmine]

Wicked! Love natural learning :).

Lots of vigorous head nodding from me when I read this:

'I was just taken completely by surprise that she could form the letters so well solely from seeing them written....'

Amazing isn't it. We learn (and unlearn) so much on the journey too. I have made similar observations and realised that I am surprised by the ingenuity of a child learning. In your example, I think 'wow, a child can look at something and copy it while at school the assumption is they must do the dots thing and other ways of 'teaching' ......Incredible!'. If that makes sense at all :lol!

[Beatrice]

She loves the dots as well. She just naturally comes at this from so many angles - she enjoys tracing dots, and copying over letters, and writing down words I spell out for her, and copying out words, and then she'll decide she's writing a story and it's the usual pre-writing scrawl for this age with hardly any recognisable letters. Yet when she wants a shopping list she'll ask me how to spell out the words and write them out carefully. It's all so fascinating :D

[~*heket*~]

Wow! I'm loving this thread :D

(when are you enrolling her in school???????? :rofl)

[Beatrice]

Um, never? :imateapot

Today she was looking at the words in her tracing book and asking "How do you say 'balloon' without the 'b'?" Honestly, she's following a textbook phonics program all on her lonesome :lol

[Ceres]

D likes to watch me play scrabble, and he told me that if I put a "w" there I could turn hinter into winter. Yay for natural learning!

[GreenGully]

Go D!

[Beatrice]

That's very cool :)

[Sarasvati]

Wow!

[Beatrice]

K is making herself a clock and writing the numbers on it. She's currently up to 28 :lol She had to ask me how to write 13, 14 and 15 but after that it clicked and she just kept going from there and figured out the 20s entirely by herself.

[homebirthmum]

It's amazing isn't it!
My 4 y/o dd has only 'left' kindergarted about 5 weeks ago. In the last few days she has made posters of her favorite things 'Bugs' and 'backyard wildlife' and asked me how to spell all the words. She has written them quite small and in order:shock
This is natural learning alright. I have not 'coached ' her in any way. It is amazing to watch.
Go us and our beautiful kids. :)
writing or not writing... just doing it at their pace.

[Hush]

And I bet that would be discouraged at school HomebirthMum because it wouldn't fit the day's topic, or it wouldn't be 'writing time', or other various learning-inhibiting nonsense that goes on at school.

[Beatrice]

How lovely, HBM :)

[~*heket*~]

Awwwww! Very nice :)

[Beatrice]

K has gone back to asking us to spell words for her to write recently, but today she wrote a story :shock She hand-wrote two and a half pages of it herself, then she dictated the rest of it (to Birthdance, who was visiting). It's her first fanfic ;) about the Moomins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin).

[~*heket*~]

very cool :lol

[Ceres]

Wow! She's one smart cookie. Can you scan it in for us?

[Beatrice]

She was writing things when I was upstairs with H. All about how to make things. This is her attempt at "how to make": "Haw t mekc".

*is boggled*

[Ceres]

That is so smart!

[Beatrice]

I have to come here to be boggled because she thinks it is totally normal :lol And of course it is, I just have wonky expectations of normal.

My DH was reading at this age but I don't think he was writing.

[NibbleCurlynBub]

:rofl Its fantastic, isn't it!

Jayden (aka Curly) knows all the letters of the alphabet and can read and spell a few short words.
I don't drill him, he just asks me to read this and that and picks it up as we go along.

No ABC song or repetitive conditioning here, just the natural curiosity to learn. :eager (ha, see grandads new wife, recitation isn't the only way to learn)

[Beatrice]

Heh heh. I have teachers in the family as well, I can relate to that!

[NibbleCurlynBub]

Heh heh. I have teachers in the family as well, I can relate to that!
She isn't even a teacher.. Just really bossy. :lol

[Beatrice]

This morning K was writing a label for her Otter Pet Shop (we sell otters!) and was asking what letters make "sh", so I told her. Then she came up to me with a piece of paper where she'd written "sh ch wh" and asked "What does 'wh' say?" About forty five minutes later we'd chortled our way through silent 'h', short and long 'oo', 'ick' and the various ways in which one can achieve a 'k' sound (and silent 'k'!), also a detour into upper and lower case letters... She's also worked out that she can spell her name with an initial "C" - I thought they weren't supposed to start changing the spelling of their name until their teens? :runcry :lol

[~*heket*~]

Amazing stuff!

[Beatrice]

It's just so much fun. I'm finding it really easy to imagine how pointless it would be deciding that it's 9am Monday, time to work on literacy, here's our workbooks. When she's switched on and interested she just drinks it in but if I were trying to get her to pay attention now, even if she didn't mind doing it, I'm sure she wouldn't be getting half as much out of it.

[~*heket*~]

So true. But you have to do MATHS at 9am Monday to ensure that you hate both maths AND school for all eternity :lol

[Beatrice]

Just keeping this thread updated: K is now doing limited google and youtube searches using the predictive text dropdown (after about a week of modelling she's getting the hang of typing a few letters then scrolling down to find the one she's looking for). Still asking for spellings of a lot of things but has memorised more common words like "cat", "dog" and "and", and has discovered Fun With Plural S. And she spends aaages reading familiar books to herself - no idea how much she's doing from memory vs reading, not worried about it.

[Ceres]

Woohoo! She's such a smart cookie.

[cgull]

Do keep updating, I'm loving this story :)

[Eir]

exciting stuff, huh? m is constantly asking me to 'look things up on the computer' and we google whatever it is that she's interested in. workbooks smerkbooks :lol

[Beatrice]

She asked me to read to her tonight but I wasn't feeling enthused so got her to start reading with me. Our deal was that she read all the little words - and, the, is, was, it, in, on etc. Some of them she already knew, some of them we sounded out and she remembered after a couple of goes. We tried it with a few longer words like tree, which she was recognising by the end of the book. And she got some of the others because she remembered from previous read-alouds, or guessing from context. We haven't done anything else along these lines for yonks, although she's been asking for spellings and doing the predictive text searches pretty regularly since I last posted. After experiencing B's totally different journey to literacy, it is so amazing to watch K just effortlessly absorbing it all :)

[Beatrice]

Heh. It's been a while since I updated this thread. K just sat down with me and read me one of the kindy readers we bought for B. She knows the story, but it was obvious she was correcting herself from the text when the word she said didn't match up with what she was reading. It's been fairly easy to see that her word recognition and accuracy with sounding-out was increasing lately but it's the first time she's sat down with me and let me see where she was :)

She decided last week that now she was going to Learn To Read, and has obviously decided to put some work into it which she is framing in consciously educational terms, but it's fascinating to have this record of how long the learning has been going on without her interpreting it as "work".

[Janet]

Way interesting stuff to me as I watch my kids decide how they want to learn to read and write. I'd love to see a heap of accounts actually of literacy learnt outside of the yooshual channels.

[Kris]

That's so cool!

[Beatrice]

I was doing some journalling in my room earlier today, and the kids decided to communicate with me by sticking notes under my bedroom door. K is obviously a pedant in the making - she wrote me a note saying "I want to make something" and spelled want as w' - when I asked her, she said it was because she didn't know the rest of the word so she put an apostrophe in there to indicate that there were missing letters :lol That's my girl! The note was spelled "I w' to mk sfi", and she explained that she had sounded out the words to try and work out what letters to use.

[Ceres]

Wow! That is so clever! I love the way their minds work.

[Morph]

That's awesome. Learning in progress. I love this thread. Thanks for keeping us updated, Beatrice.

[Beatrice]

She's a funny kid. She's cross with me this week because I don't give her enough bookwork to do :lol I explained to her that I have no set idea about what her learning should look like and if she wants to do something different to let me know and I'll try to facilitate it. I remembered that I had a collection of bits and pieces left over from my more formal attempts at teaching B phonics (the bit she struggled with the longest) so found it in the shed and brought it in. So they're playing with a "shufflebook" (cards with words/phrases on them that you shuffle together to make really long absurd sentences), after we went through and did all the phonics flashcards. She loved the flashcards :lol

My kids never cease to surprise me. I guess it took so long trying to get my head out of the learning=seatwork mindset with B that it seems very odd that both of them now ask for it :bumbler

[GardenPheenix]

This topic fascinates me. B was in school last year and learned because that's what they do and I found the method they used strange. But she had a book with letters and sounds and now that she ISN'T in school, she carries it around with her and quizzes me on the letters. She can remember how to form a lot of them but seems to have no grasp of how they fit together to form words, even though I encourage her to sound it out when she is in the mood to try. Reading is like ridiculously important to me so it's a conscious effort not to be like OK TODAY WE WILL LEARN HOW TO READ! lol.

The library is AWESOME though. I joined last month and we've been going 1-2 times a week. I just joined myself and as every week, we go do the errands and finish it off with the library and the local diner for lunch. It's our thing we do every week now and I absolutely love it. We then get home and read the books over 2-3 days and she keeps going back if she likes the story and then repeat it all the next week. Lovely.

Rambling on - when I was a teen we lived beside a library and I have the nicest, loveliest memories of walking over by myself and browsing the aisles with the sun streaming in from the windows and the smell of books overwhelming me. This library is bringing that back and it's really had a lovely calming effect on me.

How's that for rambling LOL

Neat topic! Thanks for sharing

[Beatrice]

K has fallen in love with a ghastly book (http://www.scholastic.ca/titles/themermaidsecret/) of the pink-sparkly-merfairyprincesses genre, and my refusal to read her the entire book in one sitting made her decide that she was going to read it herself, dammit! And perhaps I should have just read her the damn thing in the first place, because now I have to sit with her and help with the big words :lol But she branched out and read something else, when she got tired of the smaller print in the mermaid book, so at least I got a break :P

I was interested to see that she is predicting unknown words from shape, context and picture cues as well as using more explicit phonetic sounding out. She obviously has a pretty big sightword vocabulary too. I think that with H I will still do a bit of relaxed phonics when he's interested, because I've had the experience of sticking with a whole-word kind of approach with B and she just never got some of the sound-letter associations on her own, but it's certainly interesting to see how K has gone about it.

[zenifa]

Oh B, I dare not open that link if my girls are in the study with me, or I'll be pestered to get that book too!! Right up DD1's alley, if it has mermaids, princesses, unicorns, she's in (rolling eyes!)

[irishwillow]

Beatrice, it's lovely to hear your accounts as I don't know what my girls would have done, altho' Willow was only halfway through grade 1 when we pulled her out and she is an amazing writer and speller, plus her reading aloud is good. Interestingly, Ireland was grade 3 and still can't spell( can't break down a word, she knows it's wrong, but has trouble fixing it)...it's getting better tho' purely because she is such a voracious reader...at school she could do all her spelling homework words by the end of the week, but a week later was hopeless with them...so much for rote learning eh?

[Beatrice]

B was the same with spelling, Irishwillow. It's not the rote learning which helps her with that, it's actually getting to the point where she wants to communicate in writing so she has a real incentive to make herself understood...

zenifa, when I was reading K the author's bio in the back of the book, I carefully omitted the fact that she's written a five volume series on unicorns as well :lemmeout

I keep telling myself that the pink-sparkly genre is a gateway drug to recreational reading and eventually they get onto the harder stuff ;)

[skrapkat]

We read a book everynight, I have always been a reader, and I love that time we spend together at night. We usually read the book and then talk about what the story meant to us!

[zenifa]

zenifa, when I was reading K the author's bio in the back of the book, I carefully omitted the fact that she's written a five volume series on unicorns as well :lemmeout

I keep telling myself that the pink-sparkly genre is a gateway drug to recreational reading and eventually they get onto the harder stuff ;)

You are a wise woman!! I like your theory, I am trying to let go of my ambivalence re: unicorns etc and just focus on nuturing my DD1's and DD2's already entrenched love of reading!!

[Kris]

DS is starting to read, deliberately and also unconsciously. He has books he likes to work through with me but he's been doing a lot of off the cuff reading and surprising himself.

[Beatrice]

That's awesome, Kris :D

[cgull]

I keep telling myself that the pink-sparkly genre is a gateway drug to recreational reading and eventually they get onto the harder stuff ;)

:rofl

[Beatrice]

:lol It helps that B started with the pink sparkly stuff too, but now she's reading Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett, so I'm not too worried about it having a lasting effect on K ;)

[zenifa]

Was at the library yesterday with the girls (unplanned trip) and DD1 found lots of 'reader' type books, I'm imagining they are quite similar to ones that kids get at school to take home to read when they are in gr 1 etc, and we got about 10-15(several different series) and she has started to read them over the last two nights, given that she has been off reading eggs for at least a month (her interest lasts in in short blocks, then she has a break and later goes back to it), but she seems to enjoy these 'readers'.

Just wondered if others have gotten readers out of the library and have ones they can recommend?

[Ceres]

We never did readers. DS's speech path recommended not using them because of their generally poor sentence structure. Any easy story books with lots of rhyming and use of repetitive words will do the same job, but will be more pleasurable to read IMO.

[Beatrice]

My Mum (ex teacher) recommended the PM series, and we have a couple of levels from B's first year homeschooling. I stopped using them with her after a couple of months of school-at-home, when it became clear she was totally burnt by bad teaching at school. Since then, both K and H have been absolutely in love with being read them aloud around the ages of 2-3, but by the time K was interested in reading she had lost interest in the readers. She now occasionally reads one with H but is much more interested in real stories. (And I decided years ago that life is too short to read crappy books to my kids, so I'm against them on the aesthetic grounds, too).

I found with B, and now K, that they aren't really motivated to read anything which they wouldn't enjoy being read to them. Which was a bit of a challenge with B since she learned later and was frustrated by wanting to read something like Harry Potter but was still struggling with fluency and comprehension. She didn't take a leap into independent reading until we found something (the My Secret Unicorn series, actually :lol) which hit the sweet spot of being challenging but not TOO challenging to read, as well as engaging her interest and giving her the motivation to persevere. And by the time she'd finished the first book that was it, she was a reader, and she's never looked back. I haven't found that sweet spot with K yet, but it'll happen eventually :)

[zenifa]

Thanks for the replies B & C, I think I will just continue to let DD1 pick the books she is interested in (rather than checking which phonics program and level the readers are) and go from there.

[Beatrice]

You never know, she might adore them and demand to read the whole series :lol I've found that K, having never been taught, has no prejudices against "educational" stuff. If it interests her then she doesn't shy away from it like B did for years.

[zenifa]

I guess though, as we aren't trying to replicate 'school' at home, there is no 'need' to use readers, I just wondered if other people's children enjoyed reading them.

Most of the ones I've seen do have some lousy sentence construction and are a bit boring. DD1 has enjoyed a series of ones about people's occupations, natural world (plants, animals) and one about people and cultures from around the world.

I think DD1's love of horses/unicorns means that soon she will try to read 'secret unicorn' series on her own, as she does enjoy having it read to her, but is keen to read it to herself esp now she has the 'treasury' with 7 books in one :lemmeout

[Beatrice]

K hasn't been interested in reading for quite a while, but the other night I asked her if she wanted to try reading the book we were reading (The Stick Man) and she loved the idea. So now that's her preferred wind-down bedtime activity :lol She's a bit rusty on sight words but it sounds like sounding out is becoming much easier for her.

It's funny, when I started this thread I was expecting that she'd be an "early" reader. Now she's about to turn six and still hasn't quite made the breakthrough and I'm okay with that. She'll get there in her own time :)

[Ceres]

I think we sometimes have an expectation that they will learn / grow / develop in a continual and regular fashion, when actually it's more fits and starts. I was totally amazed at how quick the move from picture books to novels came! Something to do with a combination of desire and brain maturation I suspect.

[zenifa]

B, I've found that with my DD1 who is similar age to K that her interest in reading ebbs and flows, and like you I'm not that concerned as she still loves books and I'm quite happy to continue reading to her.

[JKay]

That is awesome B! K is doing it all so early....I find the LtR, RtL writing thing really interesting. K more often than not, when he's copying words, writes RtL...I read somewhere that the earliest scripts were written RtL, like arabic and hebrew, and i wonder if it's 'natural' to write that way, and we just unlearn it to write the english alphabet?

[turtledove]

That's interesting, J did the same, writing right to left that is, most the time now he writes LtR, although occasionally will go RtL... He doesn't write much, and is not reading either, although he's definitely progressing towards it (albeit slowly). He is almost 8 and while I feel pretty relaxed about him learning to read whenever he is ready, I'd love to hear some stories of other late readers. Anyone got anything to share?

[Beatrice]

I've talked about B a bit on here - she was at least ten before she became fluent, and she dived straight into chapter books. Now she's devouring YA fiction :)

[Kris]

DD1 was nine before she clicked; she's sure that DS will get it sooner than her - and tells him so, but in a reassuring, not ner ner way.

[turtledove]

So did you just leave them to it?
About 6 months ago J asked me to teach him, so we started on the 'Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons' but only got through about 9 lessons before he lost interest, so I'm just leaving him to it now. I think he'd love to be reading, but clearly something just hasn't 'clicked' for him yet.
We read a lot together, he loves stories, and loves looking at books.

[Kris]

Yeah, I did. She was in school for part of that time but tbh I haven't noticed any difference between how it clicked for her and how it's now clicking for DS. He's sight reading signs, labels, pretty much anything and he's been doing that for a year. But he's far more confident and the words he's recognising are bigger. He's also reading short story books to his little sisters. I suggested we work on reading while his sister was away and he said "GREAT as long as you don't expect me to write as well, I hate that!" :blueroll

[Beatrice]

I got that same book a couple of years ago but the whole "You must teach our lessons exactly without deviating one word from the text" thing made me go :lemmeout

[Beatrice]

I'd completely forgotten about this thread but it really needs updating :lol

K went through another cycle of fascination with words and reading, starting in March, and this time she fell in love with the first reader in the McGuffey Eclectic Readers box set I picked up years ago. She was drawn to it because of her interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder, since the McGuffey readers were one of the most popular texts in Laura's day and were probably (although it's not specified in the books) what she used. Naturally that appealed to K, who started role-playing Laura at school using the readers at Dylan's fabulous old-style school desk. And then she got hooked on the fact that she could actually *read* the readers. She started sitting down with me for an hour or so a day and working through the book. Then she started looking at other books, and discovered that she could understand some of the words. And once she had the basic foundation words and the confidence to keep working at unfamiliar words, she made that all-important leap and started thinking of herself as A READER :yay
:natlearn :homelearning

[Beatrice]

Oh, and I forgot to add that this coincided with us realising that something was going on with her vision, and her getting reading glasses. It's quite possible she would have made the leap a year ago if we had realised that she couldn't focus on close work for long without getting tired and giving up :oops

[zenifa]

That is awesome B :yay

Your second post got me thinking. My DD1 is a very keen reader and writer, and similar age to K (will be 6 in August) however we have noticed that when she watches tv or computer she turns her head to the side and we are concerned about her vision, so I'm taking her on Friday to a behavioural optomertrist for a full assessment - I feel quite bad about this as we noticed it a while ago but lately its gotten a lot worse, so we are hopeful its nothing too serious and easily correctable. She already has a mouth plate ahead in the future to correct a cross bite, not sure how she would cope with glasses, but we'll see.

How is K with the reading glasses?

[Beatrice]

She loves them. It helps that DH and I both wear glasses so it's not like she's the odd one out. And she doesn't go to school so doesn't have to worry about being teased :rolleyes

K has some complex stuff going on with a lazy eye and over-focusing to correct that at distance, plus the long-sightedness. I feel really bad that we had her assessed at 3 and haven't kept on top of it for the last few years to see how she's compensating. She'll probably need to do exercises to work on the focusing issues. Her lazy eye is almost unnoticeable by now because her compensation is so effective, but that's not necessarily a good thing, especially since I stopped worrying about it when I stopped noticing it :/

[Kris]

Apart from joining in with the :yay :lol I just wanted to pop in and say that DD1 had something QUITE similar to what you're describing for K. It self corrected around the time she turned 9 and she's been glasses free since :shrug :uhh

She WAS schooled when she got them at 7 and it coincided with quite a stressful period in our family life. But the reaction from her classmates was primarily jealousy :lol They were, I must say, extremely COOL glasses and they suited her. Every now and again she wonders if she'll have reading glasses again - I've used them since I was about 19.

[zenifa]

I wear glasses, but DH doesn't (aside from sunglasses) - so not sure how DD1 would adjust to that, trying not to get ahead of myself, and just wait and see what the assessment on friday brings.

[Kirkie]

Fascinating journey! I don't remember learning to read, but I think that's because I was reading pretty fluently before I got to primary school. It's lovely how naturally it can develop.

Interesting about her needing glasses, though. We realised when DD was about 18 months old that something was up with her vision - one eye began to turn inward whenever she focused closely on something - she'd never been cross-eyed before, even as a newborn. It's hereditary though, on DH's side of the family, and we got it checked out straight away. Long-sighted in both eyes, with the eye that's not yet classed as lazy, but might eventually be if it was not corrected (either natural self-correction or assisted correction). She's been wearing glasses ever since and has adjusted to them so well. Your story makes me really glad that we did realise this was an issue for her at such a young age.

[Beatrice]

The problem with self-correction is that the original behavioural optometrist we took her to said that was a possibility, so I'd been assuming that K's was fine because over the past few years her lazy eye has become hardly noticeable. But what she did to self-correct is quite unusual (according to the optometrist we're seeing now - I don't have the option to take her to see the original one because we've moved) so may be causing problems which now need to be worked on.

[zenifa]

Update, the visual assessment didn't suggest any eye turning but some longsightedness and stigmatism but not warranting glasses yet, just a reassessment in 4-6 mths. DD1 still turns her head to the left when she watches tv, so we'll get her hearing tested and try to work on the problem behaviourally for now. Her writing and reading are quite good so we'll see how it goes.

[Beatrice]

K went through a phase of reading lots of books, and then stopped for a while (although presumably was still reading environmental text, directions on the computer etc), and has now ramped up her interest again. And H has just started learning how to write his name :)

[JKay]

Cool! That was about how old K was when he started writing his name - - he had problems with 'K' for a while...he's got it now though!! He's still completely uninterested in learning to read....or actually even being read to, these days!!

[Ravensworn]

I think my 4-year-old is starting to recognise words. She's been watching Rob the Robot on iView, and I've been typing it into the browser rather than going to the iView website. When I ask her which episode she wants to watch, she's been asking for one of the "suggested" ones, if you know what I mean. I'm rather excited by this. :)

[finding my way]

this has been an amazing read! Thanks for sharing ! FAK

[zenifa]

My update

Five months later, and I take DD1 for f/up eye test, this time he thinks her longsightedness warrants glasses to correct it early - so she needs them for tv, computer and reading. He is worried about her 'schoolwork' suffering if she doesn't wear them. He knows about home ed and is supportive.

On the upside, DD1's progression to reading has been wonderful to watch. She is reading 'beginning reader' books independently and is getting more into chapter books. She is an avid library user (catalogue and browsing, selecting, putting holds on etc), and even pretends to have a library at home where he toys borrow books, and they have storytime and craft activities. She has been read to since early infancy, is surrounded by books, parents that love to read, so its hardly a surprise she's a reader and loves stories.

Today she wanted to know how well she read in relation to others, so I told her about the test a school teacher friend gave me and if she wanted to do it, she could. She was very keen and did brilliantly on her test. Her score indicates that her reading age is 8yrs 7mths (she is 6yrs 2mths). This made Dh and DD1 rather pleased, proud as punch (those two have quite a competitive streak compared to me). If anyone is interested in the 'test' then let me know.

DD2 is now four, and she is able to spell her name, her parent's & sister's names, knows all of her letters by recognition and to write, and is already learning to read. In just a couple of months of reading eggs (she does it very occasionally, usually has a spurt of enthusiasm for a day or two), she done 4 maps, and is really trying hard to read. She is not phased by her sister's reading and is more self motivated rather than wanting to catch up to her sister. The joy of natural learning, she can do this in her own time, when she feels interested and motivated.

[GreenGully]

I'm interested in the test Z. It might be fun to pull out when DS is moaning about being the worst reader in the world. I love this thread so much. It helps me to remain zen about ds's writing. He does so little of it these days and still only really writes in upper case in a wonky line. He'll get it when he needs to :)

[Beatrice]

I luff this thread too. K hasn't been doing much reading at all lately and then yesterday she hauled up a huge pile of books and read to me. I suggested she try something a bit more challenging than the readers she was starting with, and she had no problems whatsoever. Still hasn't graduated to chapter books but she probably won't unless I suggest one to try, so I should probably go and look on the shelves...

[merlot]

My DS loves all things 'testy' so i'd be keen to see it too. He's just started solo reading those early readers and it's soooooo exciting to see them actually reading and how excited THEY get when they start figuring words out all on their own. :)

[zenifa]

Can those that want the 'test' PM me their email and I'll happily email it :)

[Belinda]

Z. is that the schonnell? I did that with C a while ago. There's a spelling one too.

[zenifa]

No its the Waddington Diagnostic reading test, here is more info & downloads (yes there is a spelling test too)
http://www.wadd.com.au/files/MHaseltonAssessment2004.htm
(http://www.wadd.com.au/files/MHaseltonAssessment2004.htm)http://www.wadd.com.au/files/Reading and Spelling Tests.htm

H (http://www.wadd.com.au/files/Reading and Spelling Tests.htm)ere is the test http://highlandstla.wikispaces.com/Assessment+Resources

[Belinda]

Oh, I haven't seen that one before, Ta.

[Beatrice]

I gave K the first two Tashi books (following GreenGully's recommendation) for Christmas, and this morning she sat down on the sofa and read the first chapter, without needing to ask about any words she didn't know.

:natlearn

ETA: In fact, she has finished the book and started the next one!

[Beatrice]

She's now read both Tashi books twice and has gone on to a young readers adaptation of Black Beauty, which she is reading in bed after lights out with her Christmas torch :lol I think we can officially say we have another passionate bookworm in the family :love

[anaturallearner]

Awesome! Love natural learning!!

[Beatrice]

In complete contrast to B, who won't touch a non-fiction book even though she's an avid reader of fiction, K has started reading (without apparent difficulty) the book on the solar system (http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Guide-System-Alexander-Gordon/dp/B005Q6VSMM) her grandparents gave her for Christmas. Seeing as it's suggested for a reading age of 9 and older, she's gone from a reading age of 6 to 9 in three weeks :lol

I don't know if she finished Black Beauty, though, I think she lost it under the couch and went on to something else, but she has a shelf of books up by her bunk which I think she's dipping into at night with her torch.

[Belinda]

That's great B! :)