Category Archives: Life

We’ve had a busy couple of days what with the mislaid plans to clean the whole house, the valiant effort to get caught up on laundry and the abandoned resolution of finally getting the kitchen cabinets organized…I’m exhausted just thinking about all of the tasks I’ve left half done.

But…I’ve had a good time playing with my boys.

Monday, I wrote numbers for Joe and drew shapes for Jake on pieces of styrofoam. I dumped out a bag of golf tees and handed each of them a toy hammer from their toolsets.

I told Joe to say each number, count out that number of golf tees and hammer them in.

While he was busy with that, I asked Jake to hammer a golf tee into each shape as I said them. He enjoyed it so much that we ended up playing this game 3 times while Joe was busy counting out tees.

Tuesday, I got out the giant foam letter puzzle and scattered the letters all over the floor. Then I held up a word from the Bob Books we’ve read so far and asked him to find the letters and put them together.

Next, I told him to jump to each letter, shouting it out with each hop.

Finally, he sounded the word out.

We got through three words before he started to jump on each letter and shout it out. Jake, not wanting to be left out of the chaos, joined in by throwing foam letters all over the basement.

But, at least we had fun with letters and words.

After this rather exhausting activity, we went upstairs and I gave Joe a sheet with words from the Bob Books and Jake a few coloring pages. Joe traced each word twice, then wrote it on his own.

After he’d finished, he wrote his name at the bottom and ran to watch Super Why with Jake while I finished making lunch.

And today, after a hectic trip to the grocery store, we are going to celebrate National Reading Month by curling up on the couch with a few good books.

Joe’s been doing a pretty good job identifying sight words by sounding them out. He’ll say a few words in the Bob Books when we read through them together, but he has never actually read the whole book from start to finish on his own.

But last night, daddy asked him to read a story.

Joe was reluctant and a little shy at first, but as soon as Ray handed him the first Bob Book–Mat–he lost all shyness.

He read the WHOLE book, and it wasn’t entirely from memory. He sounded out each word before saying it.

“Mmm aa tuh. Mat!”

Ray helped a bit by sounding out the words too, but he only did that for one or two words.

Joe: Ssss aa tuh
Ray: Ssaatuh

Joe would look at the word, crinkle his brow and sound it out a few more times before proclaiming: “Sat!”

When Joe read, “the end”, we clapped and hugged and praised him. He looked so proud of himself and we were ecstatically proud of him.

I know I shouldn’t be so surprised. We have, after all, been working on these books for several weeks. Plus, he’s been sounding words out for a while now and has been able to recognize/read familiar words.

But…he’s never read a book to us. I always read books to him, pointing to words I think he might know.

I was so focused on teaching him to recognize letter sounds and sound words out that I neglected to ask him to read me a story on his own.

I wasn’t giving him a chance to exceed my expectations.

It was a humbling and a bittersweet moment.

Humbling, in that he–my 4-year-old–had reminded me not to hold too tightly to the reins…to give him a chance to shine.

Sweet, because all our hard work is becoming evident and giving both of us a huge sense of accomplishment. It’s clear that he is proud of himself and eager to learn and read more.

Bitter, in that soon, all too soon, Joe will want to read a book quietly and all by himself.

Today, I wanted to review the Bob Books we covered last week.

Joe wanted to build a contraption.

He was holding a shoestring at the time and twining it around and through his fingers saying, “Look at my contraption!”

So…we compromised.

I grabbed a piece of elastic string, a hole punch and the sight word flashcards for Bob Books 1, 2 and 3.

After punching holes in the corner of each card, I spread them out on the mini trampoline and handed Joe the piece of string.

I picked Book 1 up and started to read. As we came to each word, I asked Joe to pick the corresponding card out and thread it on the string. We did this for all three books.

I did not show him the word. Instead, I said the word phonetically so that he could hear the sound each letter made. He was able to pick out most of the words on the first try!

He got a little bored stringing the words together so he handed me the string and started rolling a tiny bottle of bubbles on the trampoline.

I could easily have gotten frustrated. But before exasperation hit, I thought of a way to incorporate the bottle into the game.

We switched gears and I asked him to roll the bottle to the right word and then pick it up.

He got a little crazy with his rolls, but he cheered for himself when the bottle rolled to where he was aiming.

This activity took a little longer than others and I could tell that I was losing his attention toward the end. Once all the words were on the string though, he had fun making his contraption.

After he played with that for a little while, I asked him to sit with me and read the cover of each book: Mat, Sam and Dot.

I knew better than to try and force him through all three books…even as short as they are. 

“Sound it out,” I said, pointing to the cover.

“Mmm. ah. tuh.”

And, after a few more rounds…

“Mm. a. tuh. Mat!”

He smiled.

I beamed.

The Bob Books reading program continued yesterday with a scavenger hunt. I drew the floorplan of our house. Then hid the words from Books 1 and 2 indicating on the map where they were.

Joe and I went over the floorplan together until I was confident he knew each room and understood how to play the game.

Then, we went hunting.

I gave Joe a clipboard to use so that we could keep all the words together after we found them.

Joe liked that.

After finding a few words, Joe decided he wanted to play with the forceps from his doctor kit. Rather than abandoning the word game, I incorporated them into the hunt.

We found all ten words and Joe wanted me to hide them again and keep playing. So we played one more time and then, after counting the cards in Spanish, we moved to the table to read Books 1 and 2.

I spread the cards out on the table and as we came to each word in the book, I asked him to find it and pick it up.

I had to dog ear the cards so that he could use his “grabber” to get the words.

He also insisted on holding the book with them.

He showed some interest in punctuation when pointing to the period and then the comma and asking what they were. Exciting!

We are starting Book 3 this week and adding the following words to the word bank: rag, Dot, has, a, dog and hat.

Hmmm. Word bank…sounds like a good game for learning both words and numbers.