Lily and I were reading before bed tonight and she did something she hasn’t done before; Lily insisted I not assist her in reading. She pulled my fingers from the words, put her fingers to my mouth, and told me to shhh and let her do it.
Listen to the video (I didn’t want to make it obvious I was recording her, and the room was dark so there’s not much to see). It speaks for itself. Tonight, she read words that she hasn’t before (they’re not part of any of the “families” we’ve played with yet).
The books contain one to five words on each page and though some of the words are indicative of the images, others are less obvious and require her to actually read/sound out the word to determine what it actually says.
She is starting to openly and assertively demonstrate her excitement at her ability to read. She explores the door to this new world with anticipation, and lots of imagination. She gets that books have stories in them now. Often, she’ll make up the dialog in a book before she asks us (or we offer) to read what’s actually there, but in the last week she’s begun approaching her previously unread-by-us books a little differently in that she’s seeking to figure out the words herself.
She chose a book today, one that I’ve never read her (nor has Russ to my knowledge), and requested my help at figuring out the title. She’d worked out the first word, but couldn’t get the second, and what she was guessing it was didn’t make sense to her so she wanted help. We’re still learning how silent E works, and though she has some awareness of the vowels, I haven’t managed to explain it sufficiently yet. (Savannah learned these with a really awesome song on a cd of related material that I can’t remember or locate for the life of me. Heh, maybe I should ask Savannah if she remembers how it sounded or what the words were, those in addition to A E I O U, that is.)
After the title, she began with the first portion of the book, confidently providing her own narration and supposed dialog of the story. But she stopped mid sentence after a few minutes and said, “No, that’s not what it says.”
“Are you sure?”, I asked, hoping to encourage her to continue along as she was.
“That word doesn’t look right. I think it’s something else, but I have to figure it out now.”
“Want help?”
“Nope.”
“K.”
And what she figured out changed the entire story.
(Sound files)
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BwtlGzQfSfkMYjlhZWI5ODYtMWUyNS00YzE3LWE1NDItOWY3ZDI2YzQ0OGU5&hl=en_US