Reading:Phonics

Ah..... I am really blessed with a child that learns easily. Maybe my dream of Reese reading at two and half might be a reality! :)

I started to teach Reese alphabets when he was about 16 months by flashing cards and sometimes watching starfall.com. By 18 months he knows all his 26 alphabets both upper and lower case.

Then I taught him to associate things that begins with a certain alphabets. This was done off and on in a very informal way. Like when we are in the car passing by a certain thing that he knows and I will tell him that so and so begins with so and so letter. Soon he understood the concept and started to associate things to letters on his own.

About 2 months (Reese was 28 months) back I casually introduced phonics sound to Reese. I did it in the car most of the time while traveling to and from my mother's place. This activity lasted for 5 minutes and no more. In less than 2 weeks later, my boy mastered all the sounds of the 26 alphabets.

Then just 2 weeks ago, again casually I introduced 2 letters combination sound. While driving home one evening, I told him that a-t is 'at' sound and continued on with 'ag, ab, ad, am, an, ap'. I repeated another 2 times and Reese repeated after me. The next day I tested him and Wow! he remembered and so I introduced the 'i' combination. In one week, he did all the 'a' , 'i', 'o' letter combination. This was mostly done verbally.

I am proud to say that as of yesterday he knew all vowel combination except 'e' because I didn't want him confused with 'a'. When I tested him visually, surprisingly he has no problem telling me the sounds. He is a clever boy.

Now I am quite confident that he might be able to read 3 letter words by the end of this month or early next month. It will depend on whether I want to spend sometime teaching him that or not... hehehe... abit lazy.

**If you think I might be pushing my son to read at such a tender age, I want to reassure you that I am not. Reese has a very good memory and he learns very fast. I have never done any formal learning with him. The discovery of him learning so quickly were all through informal play and he enjoys every moment of it.