Owen is not yet potty trained. He can be resistant to doing any kind of art project on his own, particularly drawing/painting, wanting us to do it instead. He has no interest really in drinking from a regular cup. He doesn't like big swings at all and has been reluctant about going down slides since last summer. He doesn't like brushing his teeth, having his hair combed, or his face washed. He will not sit in the bathtub, but doesn't like showers.
But one thing Owen can do is read.
I posted on FB two weeks ago about this new skill (January 24). That was the night that it finally clicked that putting sounds together equals words (the definition of reading that I'm going with. others might have a stricter definition). Joanne had taken Sophie with her food shopping as I was getting Owen ready for bed. As part of our routine, I read him three books. On that particular night, I started with Hop on Pop. I started on page 1, and we sounded out the letters.
"uh... puh... UP," Owen said.
I was a little surprised, but just figured he knew how it started. So we did the next word.
"puh... uh... puh... PUP," he said.
I congratulated him, giving him a high five, but still thought he just memorized the words on that page, so I skipped 10 pages ahead. In the next 20 minutes, with some prodding from me on what to do (what letters do you see? what sounds do they make?), he proceeded to read ball, wall, jim, bed, pat, sat, hat, bat, long, stop, snack (almost), and fast (which wasn't). And he was definitely reading--sounding out all the words and putting them together and saying the word proudly. "Fast" took a bit of time, as he kept on saying "frast". We went on to try the went, tent, sent page, but for whatever reason, he struggled with the font of the E's in the book, so we stopped.
The next morning, we did one word with the fridge letters, just to make sure it was a repeatable skill. It was. Since then, he has shown more interest in spelling, stopping in the hallways at school "what word is that?" or saying the letters of signs he sees. We've even started on a few two-letter sound combinations. He understands "sh" and "ng" well, which allowed him to read the word "shopping". And today, while over at my parents, I tried the more complicated rule of what "e" does to other vowels, using "pancake" as an example. That one may take a little time to stick.
So how did we get him to read before three, assuming we can take "credit"?
Owen has read to a lot from the beginning. I started reading him A Prayer for Owen Meany not too long after birth, and made pretty good progress, though we stopped for a time when he was 8-10 months, as he got too fidgety around then (digression: Sophie's World is still in progress. It just doesn't read out loud that well. We got Sophie the Awesome from a book fair at Owen's school, which is much better, and it's part of a series, so more to come there). Into his ones, we heard the bar for reading was 20 minutes a day. We were doing that before breakfast! He went through a long phase where on days he was at home, at least 2 hours were spent reading. When I picked him up from school in his old class, we'd always ready 2-3 books before leaving, among other things, so pickup time always lasted longer than drop off time. He did go through a phase where he only read at bedtime (late spring/early summer last year, I think), but he got back into character.
The other big learning tool has been Fridge Phonics. We got a set, apparently for his second birthday (I thought we got it earlier than that, but that's what the Amazon order history says), which he's liked a lot. My mother's friend then gave her two sets, one upper case and one lower case, that was an older version of the set. I remember one weekend, maybe around June, Owen stayed over and when I went over to pick him up, he had all 52 letters on the floor and we were sorting them into the upper case bag and the lower case bag. He got pretty much all of them, on his own, into the correct bags. Shortly thereafter, I took those letters with me, with the plan to swap them for my set, as I wanted Owen to have a set of lower case letters, having read that helps reading skills develop, since 90+% of letters are lower case. I never did give my mom the set we had at our house (sorry Mom, but you have a grandson that can read. I'm sure the inconvenience was worth it), so Owen has had three letter sets to play with, which we've put to good use (this is from October when Sophie came home):
But the biggest factor is our time. I think the list at the beginning is instructive. In some respects, those things that require active repetition (art, cleaning, etc) we did less of or didn't demand enough from him (making it a passive activity for him), but passive repetition (reading) was easy. So Owen has been very advanced in a lot of memory-based areas. In his class of ~14 last year, he was the best at shapes and colors, knew the most animals, and recognized all the letters around 2, and had most sounds down not too long after that. Miss Barb, his teacher, told us she thought he'd be reading by the time he was three, so that gave us a goal, though we didn't look too hard for material to help us accomplish that. We just kept on doing what we were doing--playing with letters and reading.
When people commented on how smart he was, I would always (and still do) downplay it a bit, stating what he was/is doing is displaying a good memory. And I have no idea if it's an outstanding memory, or just the things that he remembers get placed into the "smart" bucket (shapes, colors, letters, words), rather than the more "cute" bucket (singing a long with songs, random recollections) etc. As a person who people think has a good memory (which isn't actually true--I just openly share what I do remember, not what i don't), I know that's not the end all of intelligence, success or happiness.
Going back to Owen's reluctance to do art projects on his own, when we want him to draw, or paint, or make something with play-doh, he'll often say "I can't", and part of me wonders if he wouldn't be better off just doing that with more confidence, even if it meant he wasn't reading until he was 4. Is he that developmentally advanced? Or is it just tradeoffs between traits and habits because of how we allot time to them? Will Sophie be more advanced than Owen in some of those things because she gets to see him and/or a change in how we divide time with active and passive repetition activities? I guess this puts me firmly in the nurture, rather than nature category.
But one thing Owen can do is read.
I posted on FB two weeks ago about this new skill (January 24). That was the night that it finally clicked that putting sounds together equals words (the definition of reading that I'm going with. others might have a stricter definition). Joanne had taken Sophie with her food shopping as I was getting Owen ready for bed. As part of our routine, I read him three books. On that particular night, I started with Hop on Pop. I started on page 1, and we sounded out the letters.
"uh... puh... UP," Owen said.
I was a little surprised, but just figured he knew how it started. So we did the next word.
"puh... uh... puh... PUP," he said.
I congratulated him, giving him a high five, but still thought he just memorized the words on that page, so I skipped 10 pages ahead. In the next 20 minutes, with some prodding from me on what to do (what letters do you see? what sounds do they make?), he proceeded to read ball, wall, jim, bed, pat, sat, hat, bat, long, stop, snack (almost), and fast (which wasn't). And he was definitely reading--sounding out all the words and putting them together and saying the word proudly. "Fast" took a bit of time, as he kept on saying "frast". We went on to try the went, tent, sent page, but for whatever reason, he struggled with the font of the E's in the book, so we stopped.
The next morning, we did one word with the fridge letters, just to make sure it was a repeatable skill. It was. Since then, he has shown more interest in spelling, stopping in the hallways at school "what word is that?" or saying the letters of signs he sees. We've even started on a few two-letter sound combinations. He understands "sh" and "ng" well, which allowed him to read the word "shopping". And today, while over at my parents, I tried the more complicated rule of what "e" does to other vowels, using "pancake" as an example. That one may take a little time to stick.
So how did we get him to read before three, assuming we can take "credit"?
Owen has read to a lot from the beginning. I started reading him A Prayer for Owen Meany not too long after birth, and made pretty good progress, though we stopped for a time when he was 8-10 months, as he got too fidgety around then (digression: Sophie's World is still in progress. It just doesn't read out loud that well. We got Sophie the Awesome from a book fair at Owen's school, which is much better, and it's part of a series, so more to come there). Into his ones, we heard the bar for reading was 20 minutes a day. We were doing that before breakfast! He went through a long phase where on days he was at home, at least 2 hours were spent reading. When I picked him up from school in his old class, we'd always ready 2-3 books before leaving, among other things, so pickup time always lasted longer than drop off time. He did go through a phase where he only read at bedtime (late spring/early summer last year, I think), but he got back into character.
The other big learning tool has been Fridge Phonics. We got a set, apparently for his second birthday (I thought we got it earlier than that, but that's what the Amazon order history says), which he's liked a lot. My mother's friend then gave her two sets, one upper case and one lower case, that was an older version of the set. I remember one weekend, maybe around June, Owen stayed over and when I went over to pick him up, he had all 52 letters on the floor and we were sorting them into the upper case bag and the lower case bag. He got pretty much all of them, on his own, into the correct bags. Shortly thereafter, I took those letters with me, with the plan to swap them for my set, as I wanted Owen to have a set of lower case letters, having read that helps reading skills develop, since 90+% of letters are lower case. I never did give my mom the set we had at our house (sorry Mom, but you have a grandson that can read. I'm sure the inconvenience was worth it), so Owen has had three letter sets to play with, which we've put to good use (this is from October when Sophie came home):
 |
| From Sophie comes home |
But the biggest factor is our time. I think the list at the beginning is instructive. In some respects, those things that require active repetition (art, cleaning, etc) we did less of or didn't demand enough from him (making it a passive activity for him), but passive repetition (reading) was easy. So Owen has been very advanced in a lot of memory-based areas. In his class of ~14 last year, he was the best at shapes and colors, knew the most animals, and recognized all the letters around 2, and had most sounds down not too long after that. Miss Barb, his teacher, told us she thought he'd be reading by the time he was three, so that gave us a goal, though we didn't look too hard for material to help us accomplish that. We just kept on doing what we were doing--playing with letters and reading.
When people commented on how smart he was, I would always (and still do) downplay it a bit, stating what he was/is doing is displaying a good memory. And I have no idea if it's an outstanding memory, or just the things that he remembers get placed into the "smart" bucket (shapes, colors, letters, words), rather than the more "cute" bucket (singing a long with songs, random recollections) etc. As a person who people think has a good memory (which isn't actually true--I just openly share what I do remember, not what i don't), I know that's not the end all of intelligence, success or happiness.
Going back to Owen's reluctance to do art projects on his own, when we want him to draw, or paint, or make something with play-doh, he'll often say "I can't", and part of me wonders if he wouldn't be better off just doing that with more confidence, even if it meant he wasn't reading until he was 4. Is he that developmentally advanced? Or is it just tradeoffs between traits and habits because of how we allot time to them? Will Sophie be more advanced than Owen in some of those things because she gets to see him and/or a change in how we divide time with active and passive repetition activities? I guess this puts me firmly in the nurture, rather than nature category.
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