1 Mother 2 Another

Maddie’s been soaking up her school
lessons like a thirsty sponge, racing from new idea to new idea.
And nothing’s been embraced more heartily than her daily
encounters with the alphabet. She’s begun to make the mental
connection between what she sees on a page and words she hears out
loud, and you can tell she’s almost at that turning point to
become a reader.

When we eat breakfast in the morning
Maddie will spell out the words she sees on her cereal box, asking
me what it spells. I’ll ask her to sound it out one letter at
a time, and she’ll eventually end up with “honey”
or “crisp” or whatever she’s looking for, and
when the connection happens in her brain you see the lightbulb go
on. As someone who absolutely adores reading, I’m loving
watching all this happen.


I think she’s officially read a few words now – other
than her name, of course, which she’s recognized for a while.
Yesterday she was looking at a card she’d collected from her
zoo when she asked, “Mommy, why does it say
‘Tiger’ on the card?” When I pointed out that
she’d just read the word by herself, she almost burst with
pride.


My guess is we’ll be asking for some beginning reader books
for Christmas. When did my baby get this big?