Bookworm

My girls have always loved books.  There's no secret there.  I've purposefully taught them all to read at a young age because I really wanted to develop a love for reading.  3 of the 4 are reading independently.

Julie had her first reading lesson on her 4th birthday . . . and we haven't touched the book again since then.  I thought it was funny that she already knew the two sounds that were introduced in the first lesson.  We all had a good chuckle.  That's so Julie.

A few weeks ago, her Sunday School teacher had a funny story for us.  He told the class that they were going to read from the book of Deuteronomy.  Julie then piped up:  "I know where that is!"  As her teacher was thinking "Yeah, sure you do!" she picked up her Bible and promptly turned to the book of Deuteronomy.  Weird.

Then last week I took her to the doctor's office.  While we were waiting, she picked up Green Eggs and Ham and pretty much started reading it to me.  Granted, she pronounced a lot of things wrong (i.e. "make" was macky) but she definitely got the idea.  She did the same thing to Aaron the next day, and he came to me saying "Ummm . . . honey . . . I think we really need to get moving on formal reading lessons for Julie . . . "

So . . . the next day I pulled out the book. 

We use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  It's a fabulous book!  One lesson per day . . . if you actually do it 5 days a week (which has never been a strength of mine!) you could get through it in 5 months.  I'm lucky if we do it in a year . . . but that's no big deal.  We always got to the end.  : )

I sat down with her for 20-30 minutes and she whipped through 20 lessons.  Yes . . . my child has pretty much taught herself how to read.  By the end of the next day, she was to lesson 50.  The lessons are getting longer and more challenging, so she will definitely slow down from here on out, but I will be really surprised if she isn't done before Christmas.

Then, today in the van she was reading a book and she said "Mom, this is a *insert strange word that didn't make sense to me* book"  She pronounced this "strange word"  beg (short e)- in - ers.  Accent on 'beg'.  I was confused by what she was saying.  I thought she was making up words and being silly with her sisters.  Then she told me that she read the word herself.  She pronounced the "e" wrong and put the emphasis on the wrong syllable . . . but she read the word "beginners" . . . that's definitely a big step up from "goat" and "kitten."

SO . . . all of that to say . . . I am very curious to see what God has in store for this little munchkin!  I wish I could take credit.  This time I was just the slacker mom  : )  Really I think that what we have here is a spunky little peanut who wants very badly to keep up with her sisters!  : )  I guess there are worse things that she could learn from them!