I've done a disservice to Xander, and if in later years, he reads this blog, I want to apologize. I am guilty of assuming that because he has trouble writing, that he is not as far ahead with reading as I thought. I knew that he knew his capital letters inside and out, but there are a few lower case letters he is unsure of, like b, d, p and q. And I knew he knew a number of the sounds that the letters make. Today I accidentally stumbled upon something: when asking him the lower case letters, if I made the sound, he knew the name of the lower case letter. Interesting. So I went through all of the letters and got him to make the sounds for me.
He knew Every.Single.One!
No wonder he is giving me a hard time about working on letter names and sounds. He knows this stuff. And given the fact that he was goofing off and opening one eye at a time and peering at the letters at the end, then shutting his eyes tight and sing-songing the sound, I would say he knows them very, very well.
I have feelings of stupidity. How did I not know? The signs were there. We've been pointing out letters and sounding them out together in his books at bed time.
And elation that we can move on to what is next. Plus, he will likely be reading himself very, very soon. Amazing!
But a little bit of fear. What is he doing in Kindergarten? Two years of it, no less? And at what point will the school system actually challenge this child? I'm afraid he will be bored and get into mischief. Are we doing him a disservice by sending him to public school? And yet, we cannot afford private school.
Who knew that parenting could be hard when it was something good?
2 comments:
Yay Xander! Gabe learned the letter sounds without me really realizing what was going on. My youngest sister is an intervention specialist in a public school district near Chicago, and I was talking to her about my boredom concerns. She said she thinks it's a misconception that kids get bored. They're busy enough with fun little projects, interacting in a new social environment, and learning how to function in a certain structure that boredom isn't really an issue. The good news is it sounds like Xander loves learning, so he'll probably learn and try to soak up everything he can in any environment. If they're working on a subject he's already familiar with, he'll probably soak up the nuances and little details that might otherwise get missed.
Oh - and Gabe doesn't write much, either. I've had ZERO luck teaching how to write the letters. He can write some, but he refuses to hold a pencil correctly and has his own technique for forming each letter.
YEAH Xander!!
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