My 3.5 year old has been asking me to teach her her ‘numbers’.  By thatshe means that she wants to start learning basic phonics!  I blame our LeapFrog DVDs.  She’s now learned that “A” says, “Aaaah!”  And she’s very excited!  So, we’ve been doing some StarFall, watching The Letter Factory, and pointing out letters that she knows that we find around us in print in our daily lives.  I’m pretty sure that Kaelynn was around the same age when she initially expressed a desire to read – maybe a tiny bit later, and we’ve been taking a relaxed approach to reading with her.

After learning her basic, short sound phonics we had to wait until her ability to blend kicked in at around 5.5 (she’s now 6.5), and she’s now reading well for grade 1, but still needs me beside her to prompt her with rule reminders, and point out certain rule ‘triggers’ like silent letter e’s, vowel teams, and some consonant teams.  It’s exciting to see her progress though!  She read “Tory called the animal doctor.” a few days ago – I was so proud of her!  So it now seems that I have two on our relaxed, learning how to read program, and we’re officially heading into multi-level schooling territory!