Yesterday, Samantha spelled the words "Sam," "cat," "Adam" and "Jinx." Adam wrote them on the ground with sidewalk chalk as they sounded them out together. She needed help isolating the sounds, but as soon as she heard the sound, she knew what letter it was. The only one she didn't get was the "i" in Jinx because she's only learned the short "i" sound so far.
We've continued to use Starfall and we also practice while driving around town or at meals. Sam knows all the standard letter sounds now, although she'll still forget "l" and "r" sometimes, mostly because she has a hard time pronouncing them. I do think that this work of isolating sounds is going to help her pronunciation, and even her vocabulary because she'll be able to distinguish words more clearly now. I didn't think she'd be able to reverse the process and name the letters based on the sound - we've never worked on that directly - but she did it with ease. She is also "reading" everything she sees - food packaging, signs on the road, stuff that comes in the mail. Usually "reading" means that she'll name some of the letters and maybe make their sounds. Sometimes it means opening a book she knows well and telling the story from memory as she turns the pages. I thought it was cute when Sam insisted that there was an "x" on my computer screen and it took me a while to figure out she meant the red "x" icon to close the window.
Next, I'm going to try reading Montessori Read and Write, by Lynn Lawrence, and next month I'll talk to Sam's Montessori teacher about where to go from here. It's amazing to see Sam learning so much so quickly, and taking such obvious pleasure in the process.
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