Cary and B.O.B. are becoming friends

Some of you mentioned the B.O.B. books for Cary when I mentioned a while back that he was showing some very preliminary early reading signs.

I was doubtful that he was ready, so I didn't get them. But lately, Cary has been poking his bottom lip out, lamenting that "I don't know how to reeeeeeaaad," and "I can't reeeeead!" so I figured it couldn't hurt to at least try the books and see how he does.

We got the first set of books last week, and he is doing so great with them, I can't even tell you!

I don't know why the sound on this video is soooo incredibly low, but if you turn your computer speakers ALL the way up, as far as they'll go, you can hear him sounding out words phonetically, like a big boy! So proud of him! Most of all, he is really proud of himself!

Dean is also doing very well with the books, though he is not as adept just yet as his older, book-loving brother in this area. But what has surprised me about my builder/doer/helper boy Dean is that --  once he saw Cary "reading" --  he immediately took a serious interest in the books, and has been asking me every day to read them to him and help him sound out words. And unlike Cary, who is easily frustrated when he doesn't quickly master something, Dean is undeterred by mistakes and just wants to keep trying and trying and trying. I SO admire that trait in him. (Not sure who he gets that from, but don't look my way...)

It's nice to see them both excited about these books. Generally, Dean has his "thing" and Cary has his, and they both sorta don't care what the other one is into. But with this, both boys are equally psyched about at least trying to figure out what those darn words on those little pages are actually saying!

Looking forward to them learning even more about reading this school year! Maybe by this time next year, they'll be reading bedtime stories to us.

From sight words to "reading" words

Cary has been showing signs lately that he really wants to know how to read. He picks up anything he can find with words on it and asks us, "What does this word say? What does this word say?"

I told my Mom -- who has a Master's in early childhood education -- and she told me to start teaching him to recognize simple "sight words," words that every person who can read just recognizes from rote memory, without having to sound out or use context clues to figure out. I looked up "sight words" online and found there were a ton! But my sister, also an educator, told me to focus on the Dolch sight words -- and only on the very, very first level.

So about a month ago I put up this collection of words on the wall in front of their activity table, so they could see it every day.

I put the words up with a different word next to 'my' but had to take it down when Cary said, "Mommy, you forgot 'of'." So I had to write 'of' on a post-it. He now tells me I don't have "he." But I haven't gotten around to getting "he" up there yet.

And every now and then, we'd go over the words. We'd only do a few at a time, and when they got bored, I'd stop. I was really surprised at how quickly they picked up the words, especially Cary. Sometimes, I would even see Cary mouthing the words to himself, on his own. (That boy loves the written word!)

When I talked to Tahira about it, she told me that Cary was ready to start reading and suggested the BOB books. But I looked at them and thought that at 3.5, he just wasn't ready. He can recognize a few words by sight (thus the point of "sight words"), but he can't read. I figured I'd wait until they turned 4.

But last night, we were reading "Green Eggs and Ham," and on a whim, I asked Cary to help me read a couple pages. And I have to say, he did way better than I thought he would, not just recognizing sight words, but remembering the words from (far too) many readings of the book, and also trying to sound some words out. Good ole Dr. Seuss really works!

Not to be outdone, Dean tried his hand at it, too. Bless his heart. :-)

 It is really amazing to see my boys even attempt to read! One of these days, they'll be picking up "Game of Thrones" to read along with me! (At the rate I'm going with Book 2, they might finish the series before I do. Not joking.)

The point is, now I'm considering buying the BOB books, but I'm going to talk to their preschool teachers next week at their parent-teacher conference first. I want to make sure anything I'm doing is helping and not hurting. And I also need tips on how to work with Cary, who is clearly farther ahead than his brother (in this area), without doing any damage to Dean's self-esteem or making him think that reading is "Cary's thing."

Because, really, each of them is doing really great at pre-reading skills, and I'm so, so proud of them both!

*Not sure why these videos aren't working. Grrrr! You'll have to trust me that they're both pretty cute.

Dean reports that he knows how to read!

After dinner yesterday, Dean came up to me yelling, "Mommy, I know how to read! I know how to read like Russy knows how to read!" (They love and look up to Russy so much!)

 Here's his version of "reading:"

Isn't that the cutest thing? He's so excited!

I love it!

Thank God for filters

Saturday morning, I caught my three favorite guys in a moment so perfect, I stopped what I was doing, grabbed my camera (that would be my iPhone) and snapped a picture.

Ugh! It turned out terribly. Look at that! You can barely see the people in the picture, much less get a sense of how sweet that scene was when I spied it from the kitchen.

I was so disappointed.

They were sitting there by the window, reading by natural light. It was beautiful in reality, but when captured digitally, all that backlit glory was murder on my Kodak moment.

What's a girl to do when this happens? Go around turning on all the lights in the room, disturbing that peaceful scene, and try to capture it again? That would never work with my easily-distractable boys. And who has time for that?

Then I remembered that I have photo apps on my phone!

And with a couple clicks, the cropped and filtered scene was as it should be -- all warm and glowy:

When you have an iPhone as a camera -- and no photography skills whatsoever, thank God for filters.