The kids are REALLY into drawing maps these days. I think they think they are pirates and are going to find a treasure! They like to draw it and then roll it up, carry it around for days, and consult it to see which way they need to go. Most of their maps consist of some squiggly lines and an occasional "X marks the spot."
So of course, I recently bought them a book about maps that starts off in a kids room (a map of the room) and essentially backs out to a map of the house, then the street, then the town, all the way to a map of the solar system. This inspired them to draw the following...pretty good if you ask me!
Here is Mason's map. You can tell because he labeled it at the top, sounding out the word "map." He then drew some buildings and labeled them with the first initial. W = Which Wich or Wal Mart (not sure). CH = Chuck E. Cheese, of course! And my personal favorite...he sounded out "our house" and wrote "R HOWS."
Here is Owen's map, as you can see at the bottom. His map is mostly the roads to the particular destinations. He even discussed as he was drawing his many roads how we could take "this road or this road or this road if there was construction." H = house, W = Wal Mart, and my favorite...his best sound-out of Target. TORGIT! (Yes, the 'a' in Target sounds like a short 'o' come to think of it!)
I was quite proud of them for the detail they included. (Lots of explanation went on during the drawing phase...wish I had it on video). Good thing I took a picture of these great maps, because what did they do? Immediately roll them up and cart them around...and now...who knows where they've ended up!
A few weeks ago we were able to make a trip to Athens to visit Owen and Mason's best friend, Cate. Boy did the three of them have a fun time! They spent the better part of two entire days outside in the pool and on the water slide! No one took naps, and there was a LOT of silliness going on.
So excited but fell asleep 4 miles from Cate's house. Mason is clutching his sleeping bag because he's really excited about the slumber party!
Dance party...they didn't know we were watching for a while and it was hilarious. Of course, as soon as I start filming, they catch on!
The kids were just playing behind the couch, doing their own thing...reminded me of a clubhouse meeting.
Bike time! (O, M)
Discussing kid stuff in the pool...
Filling up yet another pool...always a good idea!
Popsicle time! (O, M)
A banana snack and a movie after a long day of fun!
I just can't believe it! My babies are READING!! I knew they were smart little boogers but, c'mon! They're not even four yet! My mother-in-law has told me in the past that Aaron was reading at age 4, and his first book was Hop On Pop. Yes, I believed her that he could "read" it, but I guess I assumed she must have meant "reciting," since he had probably been read that book so many times and had it memorized. Now that I see my own kids reading at such an early age, I tend to believe her that Aaron was actually reading that young. After all, they did get Daddy's brains!
Let me back up a minute. They have known all their uppercase letters since just before they were 2, although a few lower case ones still stump them from time to time. We tried to move from that to sounds, but they never seemed quite as interested in playing phonics games as they did in asking over and over what letter was what. So, I just figured they'd get it when they felt like it. And let me tell you...reading to your kids is the BEST thing you can do to prepare for reading on their own. We make a point to make the words on the page visible to them as we read, and eventually they started asking questions about certain words and about lower case letters. Once I realized they knew the majority of their sounds, I tried having them sound out some simple "consonant-vowel-consonant" (cvc) words. I found out that they had not yet grasped the concept that sounds combine together to form words, and if you stretch the sounds together, you can figure out what it says. Not confident in my ability to really go about teaching a child to read "properly," and knowing they were still only 3, I didn't push it. THEN....
Over Spring Break we were at a restaurant with my parents and the kids were coloring on a kids menu. For some time now they like to try to write words on their own and then ask me what it says. Their words normally end up something like "NHB." I tell them that's not a word, they write a few more letters, and return to coloring the pictures. On this day, however, I wrote "CAT" and asked Mason what it said. To my surprise, he "bubblegum stretched" those sounds out and came up with the right word. HUH? Who taught him that? I know for certain they do not work on this at school! They only go as far as letter recognition and a bit of phonics in their class. So, I wrote another word, "HAT"...and he got that one too! Then I reversed the roles and asked him to spell something for me. It escapes me what word it was, but he was able to listen for the three sounds and write them down. (Owen saw what Mason and I were doing, so he began doing the same thing on his kids menu with Granna's guidance). The topic changed and a few minutes later Mason said to me, "Mommy, this says "bob." He had written his own word and sounded it out in his head. I knew at this point I had to run with this new-found skill!
So I called a good teacher friend of mine for a refresher on what to do next (she is an expert at teaching kindergartners how to read). I made some fun games out of paper plates to focus on word families (for all you non-teacher lingo speakers out there, the "-an" family would be can, ran, fan, etc). I also made manilla folders with common blends that are unable to be sounded out, such as /ch/, /sh/, /th/, /oo/, etc. On the outside I wrote a giant "ch" and the inside had labeled pictures of things that used these blends...chicken, church, chain, etc. We went over these for a week or so and sprinkled in some "cvc" words as we came across them in books we read at night.
I also had to explain the difference between consonants and vowels, and told them that every word needs at least one vowel. We have a set of letters in which all the consonants are blue and all the vowels are red. I asked them one day what the red letters were called. They thought a minute and shouted out "VITAMINS!" And the blue letters? "CONDIMENTS!" Close...close...
The other day I purchased set 1 of the BOB book series, which has 12 little books included. These books begin with just 4 sounds, and by the 12th book, all sounds of the alphabet are included (except Q) and more words are added to the sentence. Book 1 has sentences like "Sam sat." Book 12, which they read tonight, has stuff like "The vet can fix the big cat." The idea is to go in order, but the kids are having fun choosing which book they want to read. Because they are still at the stage of sounding out most words, comprehension gets lost in the shuffle. We are definitely working on listening to the words that we read so that we know what the story is about. I've also tried to ask follow-up questions - sometimes after each page, and sometimes after the whole book - to check if they are comprehending. It's probably 50/50 right now, but we'll get there as we get faster and more fluent in reading.
We have taken several videos of them reading over the past few days, but most include a whining kid because Mommy doesn't think ahead and have them read during the day. I tend to wait, and by bedtime, they just don't feel like thinking! Tonight they were super enthused about reading and we got a good video of what they can really do! I'm SO proud of them and from what Mimi tells me, they are about 6 months ahead of when Daddy started reading. Wow!
And just in case you think I'm full of it, and for the doting grandmothers who want to see my readers in action, here is a video of them reading a BOB book. (It takes them a page or two to get warmed up but it becomes easy to understand what they are trying to read if you watch past the first minute or so.) Also, below the video are the sentences each kid reads. The words are not that clear in the video, and it's much easier to watch if you have an idea of what they're trying to say.
Jig and Mag (Mason reads title)
M: Jig is a big pig. O: Jig can dig and dig. M: Mag can dig and dig. O: Did Jig win? Did Mag win? M: Jig did win. O: Jig and Mag ran. M: Mag can tag Jig. O: Mag did win. M: The End.
