Can It Really Be?

Shhhhhhhhhh.....!

Don't tell Taylor, but I think he's READING.

It's mostly memorization and letter/sound recognition, but he LOVES it.

Ever since Taylor was a baby we have read to him every single night. When he was 2, I freaked out because he didn't want to read books before bedtime anymore but wanted to play instead. Luckily, it was just a phase and he came back around. At 2 1/2 years old, we had to remove ALL the books in his room because he wouldn't go to sleep. He would spend hours looking at books and not fall asleep. Luckily, that was just a phase too, and the books were able to be returned. When Taylor was 3 we decided that he needed a reading lamp on his bed because he was trying to look at books by the light of his nightlight! Not so good for the eyes!  From that point on, Taylor was only aloud to have 3 books of his choice during nap and bedtime. Well those days are long gone, and since Taylor turned 3 1/2 he has been able to happily look at as many books as he wants and then turn out the light and go to sleep. Tag readers have definitely helped to increase his interest in books. You can touch anything on the page and it will talk to you or you can touch the symbol on each page and it will read it aloud to you. Awesome invention!

About a month ago, I decided to do a little pre-summer experiment.

As a teacher who teaches reading, I just couldn't wait to see if Taylor would take to reading and pick it right up, or would he be completely uninterested and bored with the whole idea and want to play wrestle mania with me instead. Prepared with a few teaching tools: sight word cards (mostly 2-letter words, but some 4-letter words too), some repetitive beginning readers (level A), and an oh-so enticing green reading book bag. I told Andrew and myself that if he liked it, then we would keep going, if he didn't like it then we would stop and wait until he showed more interest.

Well true to form, Taylor loved every minute of it, and now asks for me to "teach him" his new books. Well if that doesn't make a teacher-parent happy then I'm not sure what would. He amazes me every night with how good his memory is! I guess when you don't have daily grocery lists on the brain then you have a little extra space to store all those new words and skills.

Congratulations Taylor for jumping over one of the biggest hurdles I know!