Learning to read activities

Javari has learned how to write his name recently and that is so cool. Preschool has been very fun and motivating for him. It's also fun to watch him try to write other words. It's random letters floating on the paper. I just finished reading a book called Raising Confident Readers by Dr. J. Richard Gentry and was inspired. The book gives suggestions on reading activites to do with your baby up to kids ages 7. It suggests that you start with reading at birth and then slowly introduce other activities such as drawing and labeling a few items in the baby's room to book making and using blocks and letter tiles. My oldest is in second grade and he started reading shortly after turning 5. I was doing a lot of the suggestions in the book before he started school. I didn't read anything on the topic, it was just natural. I read books aloud to him almost nightly; he would draw sometimes; we had magnetic letters and letter puzzles; he watched the Leap Frog video The Letter Factory and learned all the phonics from it; he occassionally did workbooks and many other activities. Shortly after I started moving my finger under the text while reading Hakeem started reading all of a sudden. I was really surprised because I didn't think I was actually teaching him to read. It was the best feeling listening to him read, right up there with his first baby steps. I think it was good for him to be reading before starting Kindergarten so he wasn't behind in any way. I want to make sure my other two boys can do that as well.

Javari wrote his name really good today. I will give him a marker next time so you can see better.

You can get this book from the library.

Unfortunately with my 4-year-old I haven't been doing as much home teaching as I did with my first child. You just get busier the more kids you have. That's partly why I wanted him to go to preschool at least a little bit. He only goes two days a week for two hours at a time. He started six weeks ago but I already see him benefiting from it. He knew about half the alphabet before he started and I think by the end of the spring semester he will be reading a little bit or at least recognizing some words. Literacy is so exciting!

My baby is 11 months old now and there's quite a few reading activities I can do with him already. Reading aloud is very important. Earlier this week I got him some baby crayons and markers, you know the ones from Crayola with the big plastic grips for baby hands. It's for babies 18 months and up but the book suggests that I let him draw, or scribble rather, so we'll try. I have only tried once so far and he was just banging the crayons on the paper. I'm sure he'll catch on soon though.

They have the Tadoodles at pretty much any store, including Walmart.

A few days ago I decided to try the labeling around the room activity. It is recommended for both phase 0 and 1 (more on the phases later), i.e. for both Javari (age 4) and Dequan (age 11 months). I took a bunch of blank index cards and a marker and called all three kids into their room. After I wrote a couple of cards the older two were really into it and wanted to help (they pretty much snatched the marker out of my hand!). I wrote some of the cards in Swedish and surprisingly Hakeem wanted to help with that. He often says he "hates" Swedish. Spanish is cooler of course since he learns it in school and he has classmates who speak Spanish. Javari used his kid writing to spell words, which is really interesting to watch. It's important to praise, not correct.

Hand has the same spelling in both English and Swedish.

Javari's writing on top.

Hakeem wrote Jersey.

All in all a good start on Dequan's literacy journey and a continuation on Javari's. I will update more on their progress as we go. I'm taking down notes from the book so I can share some of the reading activities with you soon.