Speaking of milestones.....

I couldn't leave Talia out of my blog as I'm bragging about my kiddos. Kyle poked fun of me last night after he saw my post on Lil. He said I should have added that she is also doing complex math equations among all the other things I listed.

Can I help it that I'm a proud mommy?

Well onto Talia....It has been very exciting and fun for both Kyle and I to see how Talia has learned and explored language and reading skills. We have seen Talia go through the progression of learning her letters and sounds to which has lead to pre reading skills, phonemic awareness, memorizing books, and making up her own words and stories. She has been able to read words in isolation for a long time now and recognize various signs/words (i.e. Target, Starbucks, etc....I guess you know where we like to visit) as well as put some simple sounds together to read words. However, this past week brought a new milestone for us when Talia opened up a book and started really reading the words, really reading the story. Last week as I was folding laundry, Lil was playing next to me and Tal was looking through a stack of books including some that I had out for Lil. I could see her starting to look at some of the books I had out for Lil including the book "Barnyard Dance" by Sandra Boyton. Tal started to name each letter in each word on the page. She was talking quietly to herself and I could hear her begin to sound the words out after she had gone through naming the letters. When I asked her what she was doing and if she wanted to share with me, she brought the book over to me and we started looking at the words together. I asked her if she wanted to put the sounds and letters together to make the words and read the story. Without hesitation she started to read the word "stomp" and then continued with some help from me to read the rest of the sentence on the page. I was so excited and proud of her! After years of working with first graders and teaching different children how to read it was such a joy to be able to experience this with her. After we finished "Barnyard Dance" I then got out some easy readers that I had used in my classroom and we began to read through them together. I didn't finish folding the laundry until later that night but it was sure a fun afternoon. I feel so blessed to be able to be home with my girls and to be the one who gets to witness these milestones.