newmom: What is your DH's native language? Lucky you that he is going home. I would send him straight to a bookstore and tell him to stock up!
Portuguese. The problem is, is that he'd be at a total loss what to buy. His family never read to him as a kid (the first time he was in a library was at age 14 to pick up a science book that he thought sounded cool). We've tried multiple times to ask for books and we'll occasionally get a handful of them but they are either way over her head (as in long chapter books) or very, extremely simple board books, which she gets bored of too. Then DH never reads them to her because he prefers the books in English because they are more interesting (mostly because I remember from my own childhood the cool ones to pick out!).
My daughter is learning Spanish, French and Mandarin. You would think I could find the Spanish books here with no problem but it really isn't that easy. Add to that Amazon doesn't have a site established for Mexico or Spain and my options are limited. If anyone knows of any good sites to order from please let me know. I would really appreciate it.
I know they definitely have Dr. Seuss in spanish on Amazon but I agree the books in other languages are organized very poorly. I wish they had a separate search function!!!
Our public library has a number of books translated into Spanish. DD keeps picking up Maisy books in Spanish and asks me to read them to her. While I can understand most of what they are saying thanks to Portuguese, I have no clue how to pronunce them so I don't think reading them to her does much good.
As for your DD reading and getting some of the words correct ... we experienced that too. We could read a book to DD a few times and she could recite it no problem. I think it is part of those gifted brains because I know we aren't the only ones who've experienced this. I'll never forget waiting in a parking lot for my DH and DD wanting to get out of her carseat. I laughed and said "Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin." This in turn brought a huge smile on her face and she recited the rest. I also remember buying her a book from the Texas Museum about clouds in the sky. I only read it once but she clearly remembered it because the next night I was trying to get her to look up at the stars so I attempted to recite the repetitive line in the book. Guess I got it wrong because she corrected me. LOL When we got home I checked the book and she was correct.
As she got older and closer to three her memorization was even more impressive. I could read books with long paragraphs on each page and after reading it max 3 times she could recite the entire paragraph. Perhaps this is part of why they tend to read earlier than most? As she recites I try to run my finger under the words and perhaps she has associated the image with the word making it easier to add to her words she recognizes.
Interesting enough as she reads now the word 'the' is her arch enemy. It is like she has a road block up for that one. And 'the' is a sight word that comes up so much. She seems to be getting past it but once and a while she stops and asks me to read it for her.
That's funny about the word the. I wonder why that is? We've noticed that she has a few sight words and will even look through some books for her favorite words. She'll also ask us to point while reading at times. We haven't had that much recitation of books, though, (maybe a few words but that is it). However, maybe that's what's coming next!
