learning to read

I started 'officially' teaching the Banimal to read this morning. Scary thought. He has been asking me for a while and I told him he had to learn his letters and the sounds first. He accomplished that, so I went and bought the book I had decided to use.

Who would think that something that you learn to do in kindergarten could be that scary for me to teach. But I just keep thinking that everything he will do in his academic career will be built on this foundation. I hope that I don't let him down. But... after I thought it thru I calmed down a little. Most of the greatest minds were taught to read by their mothers and fathers who had little to no education themselves. So with that thought I embarked on this journey.

I was pretty uneventful this morning when I did his first lesson. He breezed thru it and I only had to correct him once. Even Pteradactyl boy jumped in and did the lesson with us. He is still working on recognizing his letters, but he got the hang of m and s as quickly as the Banimal. Who knows, maybe I'll kill two birds with one stone... so to speak. He may pick up alot as I teach the Banimal. That's the way its been with most everything else.

I was surprised at how well the adapted to the new schedule I came up with. But I did make it with them in mind. We do a 'sitting at the table being still activity' like learning to read followed by a 'moving around one' like playing games or doing chores. I think with both of them being so young still I would be shooting myself in the foot to do anything that required more than 15-20 mins of sitting still. I noticed the reading lesson took about 15 mins and towards the end they were fidgety.

Well, one day down..... thousands more to go.