thank you all for the great suggestions! Here's a little update ... 5 weeks since he red his first 3-letter word ... he now remembers all the shot ones we started with just by sight ... and is now reading words like tiger, monkey, mouse, hippo, zebra ... I just pretty much write words for him that he knows and he either reads it / recognizes it right away or tries to read it and usually I say what it is and next time he remembers it! We have THREE different magnadoodle boards for him
... one in his room, one in the living room and one in the car. When he feels like it, he just brings me one and says "alphabet! let's see!" ... meaning he wants me to write letters and numbers and the "let's see" phrase is a reference to me saying a lot of let's see when I'm thinking what to write next! lol
I did get some kids dictionaries, first sight words books, etc. He LOVES them! ... I've noticed he's learning a lot of words from those. I guess between knowing what the picture could be and sounding out couple letters in the word under the picture he just somehow connects the dots then knows the word next time he sees it? Works for me! lol
I have NOT had the courage yet to let him go on my laptop ... he's a little demolition man! lol so I am a little bit worried, but I do think with my help he'll get the hang of it quick. Just like with everything else, IF it's something he's interested in, I just need to show him once and he knows. If it's something he couldn't care less for, I could spend days showing him and he'll just ignore me. I got Starfall and ABCMouse but haven't explored it much just yet.
He's right now also confusing his speech therapist a lot! He doesn't want to learn simple words but much rather tries to repeat whole phrases ... which doesn't surprise me at all as I used to joke about him probably being like that eventually
... or instead of just saying "sun", he'll say "yellow sun" ... or "blue water", etc. so, the therapist is happy with all his progress but realizes it's not her therapy as much as his brain that's doing this!
I know there's a lot of parents against too much TV but I do find the tv shows helpful! There are so many that teach the kids different things, I don't think I could do it any better! He loves Word World and Super Why so I just let him enjoy it every day.
I sent some videos of him to a friend of mine who teaches Kindergarten and she said a lot of kids at the END of K can't do what he's very easily doing now. He's still 3 years away from K! I guess we have a LOT of fun times ahead of us! lol
