Yippee!! I dropped DS off at preschool today and the teacher said, "Why didn't you tell me your DS can read?" It only took her about 3 times to figure it out, she said she was suspicious about it the first week because he read a book title and she thought, "hmm maybe he has that at home" and then he read some other titles too and she thought, "hmmm, that's quite a variety of books to happen to have at home". She said she wanted to wait to be sure before she said anything to me... so she tested him... she pointed to a random T shirt and had him read it and he read just the first line which was easy words, and she said "what's the rest" and he read the more complex words right off. And then she said she was disappointed a babysitter took him and picked him up last week as she was itching to talk to me.
It was awesome because in answer to her question about why I didn't tell her I just said, "oh I didn't want to seem pushy or antyhing like that" and she brushed that aside like, "oh no I wouldn't have thought that". I'm sure I could have told her ahead and she would have not thought that of me -- but the way it's worked out she is proud of herself for making that discovery. I'm hoping maybe that gives her extra incentive to differentiate for him, if she feels some ownership for the discovery perhaps that makes her more likely to think of his reading as her own little thing, something to nurture rather than just be aware of.
She seemed genuinely excited about it, said she had told the school director because she had to tell someone. And then it was a natural progression of that conversation for me to ask about the books on the rack and ask if there, "happened to be any more somewhere for after DS has gotten through those?" (they have like three words on each page so that was my attempt to be polite about that), and she went into a story about how DS had asked where one book was that had gone missing and how she found it for him. She spontaneously said she'd be sure to change out the books weekly and include some just for him.
And so our relationship with the teacher is off on a great footing. After reading some depressing stories here about teachers not noticing for a whole year I was just gleaming all the way home.
As I left I saw DS had spelled MOON with plastic letters and was having plastic animals jump over it like in the nursery rhyme -- so I don't know how anyone could not notice, but whatever, I'm just SO thrilled she did.
Happy Polly
