Friday, July 22, 2016

Zayd Reads

The signs have been there for months: Zayd noticing/reading billboards, him identifying that "they have root beer here!" when he saw a Maine Root Sodas sign, and especially the work he was bringing home from school in the last few months before baby. Tonight, for the first time ever, he opened a new book, and read it. To me. Out loud. For real. I kind of couldn't believe it. If you asked me if he could read I would have said "Yeah, basically....kinda" but not "Yes, he can". But he can.

I will say that he read the book to me first and then I asked him to read it again so I could make a movie and remember it. He did (see above), and wanted to but was also so nervous. I think you can see it in the movie. When we finished he blurted out "Mom, I was so scared that I would forget how to read". It was so quintessentially Zayd. Now that he knows how to read, I need to work on teaching him to be more fearless. That will likely be the challenge of our lifetime. I want to help him build the self-confidence he deserves. I can see a hint of it in his tiny smile at the end of this movie.  I will say that at gymastics lately he is getting some of that fearlessness. He flipped and flew through the equipment today and at two points a small group gathered to watch him. I was so proud of him for going for it and he loved the attention. He is growing in all ways every day. I can't believe my baby is going to kindergarten next month.


With reading, Zahra is insanely close behind. Here is a movie of her "reading" and doing her letter sounds O, H, G, and R. In all honesty, we have read this book many times this week, so she does correctly read right through in the video but I wouldn't call it "reading".  Maybe remembering with picture clues. I will say that she knows her letter sounds and can sound things out, which is pretty spectacular. She still cannot make the jump to making those sounded-out sounds into words.  Last week she read "Mat sits. Sam sits." as "Mat and Sam lie together." Ha ha.

No comments:

Post a Comment