Blending Badge Achieved!

Demur

Earlier this year in her three year-old preschool class, Sofia worked hard to earn her alphabet crown. In her current four year-old preschool class, she had to re-certify her alphabet crown skills, which she did a last week. Now, after much diligent practice and reading the letters off just about everything, she has earned the prestigious "Blending Badge".

Only about two weeks ago, she brought home five pages worth of single vowel syllables to practice with. The first time I sat down to see where she was at with those, I was amazed at how much she could do. She hardly needed any help at all. She did have a minor set back, after Daddy helped her practice one day and read all the syllables using the long vowel sound instead of the short. It took about a week to correct this confusion and Ray has been ordered to watch the Challenger preschool DVD so he can learn to pronounce vowels correctly. It's never too late to go back to preschool, right.


I have been simultaneously pleased and surprised to see how excited Sofia has been about preschool and learning to "blend" letters this school year. And although, she did earn the privilege to take home two starter reading booklets at the end of last school year to practice with at home, she often had trouble sitting down and containing the frantic energy that would develop from trying to focus and concentrate on the task of sounding out letters, blending them together, and reading short words and phrases. Her confidence and attention span would also deflate quite easily if she wasn't getting it right.

This year, she is very self motivated to learn to read and I think her accomplishments are really serving to develop her confidence and drive. It's very exciting to see, specially because I sometimes feared that she would be disinterested academically and that it might be a struggle to keep her progressing along. Because she will always be one of the oldest kids in her class, I expect to see her at the top of her class so I hope her enthusiasm with school and learning continues.

Celebratory

I'm so proud of her. As promised, we will be celebrating by taking her to a movie tomorrow.