Greek Alphabet
Quinn has learned the Greek alphabet. It was very surprising how quickly he picked it up. He had memorized nearly the entire alphabet after a single day, and had mastered it in under a week. He can recite the entire alphabet and knows all of the (written) uppercase and lowercase characters.
How Quinn is Taught to Read
These are the things I do with Quinn:
- Try to read every day.
- Read slowly and with enough volume to be clearly heard.
- Enunciate every word — in fact, over-enunciate. I don't slur words together like I would if reading or talking to an adult.
- I watch his eyes to see if he is lost lost, and if so, I use my finger to point to the word I'm on.
- If he loses interest, finish the page then stop. Come back to it in 15 minutes, an hour, or the next day.
- Take breaks. Don't read too much in one sitting.
- Encourage him to read. I use a bowl of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I read two pages, then I get a chocolate chip. Then he reads two pages and gets a chocolate chip.
- Don't dwell on a word. If he gets stuck, I give him a few seconds to work it out, then I ask him to try to sound it out, then finally just tell him, have him repeat it, and move on. (Dwelling on words is just frustrating.)
- I don't allow any mistakes. If he mispronouces a word or reads it wrong, I put my finger under the word he missed. I don't need to say anything anymore; he understands that this means he needs to re-read that word.
I mostly stick to Dr. Seuss books. My favorites, in order of difficulty, are:
- Go Dog, Go
- One Fish, Two Fish
- The Cat in the Hat
- The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
- The Lorax
- Oh the Places You'll Go
- Sneeches and Other Storeis
These books have a reasonable amount of words on each page (good for the chocolate chip technique), mostly short words, a fair amount of repetition, and the pictures are fun to look at.
New camera
We got a new camera last night to replace the one that had been busted for months (hence the lack of photos over the summer). This camera takes video with sound, and there's a new video page now where you can see Quinn counting and reading.
Reading & Searching
Quinn is reading. Is this amazing, or what? I mean, he's not just memorizing books, he can read a Dr. Seuss level book even if he's never seen it before. For words he doesn't know he sounds them out and gets them most of the time as long as they aren't too tricky.
Last night he was on his computer and he somehow got to a website we'd never seen. We realized that he typed his name into Google and found a bunch of matches which led him to the site he was on. Then we taught him to search for other things and look at the Google images. He searched for cat, moon, and a bunch of letters and numbers.
Last night he was on his computer and he somehow got to a website we'd never seen. We realized that he typed his name into Google and found a bunch of matches which led him to the site he was on. Then we taught him to search for other things and look at the Google images. He searched for cat, moon, and a bunch of letters and numbers.
#2!
Last Thursday was the very first time for #2. Hurray!!! We're on our way to no diapers. He's done it one other time since :-) and a couple times in his pants since :-( . We bribe him with an ice cream sandwich and he's been very hesitant about doing it. It's almost like he's afraid. I've had to distract him the 2 times it actually worked to get him to relax.