Clare has been writing for several months now – beginning with her name, then moving onto other names and then full sentences.  The method she’s learning at school is to teach the kids to become familiar with letters by writing them first and getting the kids familiar with the letter sounds and word structure.  Months of writing and getting familiar with sounds, words and being read to has suddenly clicked into place.  We’ve had a writer for a while, but now we have a reader.

Our reader is reading everything in sight.  She’s sounding out words at the gas station (“Mom, that says ‘Regular,’ ‘Premium,’ and ‘Plus.'”), reading boxes of food at the grocery store (“Mom!  Look!  Candy!), and reading books at home.  She took her favorite book to school and read it to her friends, apparently they all laughed at the Book With No Pictures.  She reads to Sammy and notices when J and I skip words in books.

I didn’t expect that I would enjoy watching Clare read quite so much.  It’s an absolute delight to watch the world of books and words open up to her.  She’s very proud of herself and it’s wonderful to see her sense of accomplishment.

Of course the phonetic spelling is still going strong.  She labeled her drawers the other day.

“Sox”

“Jamees”

This one got a little messy, but it means “clothes.”

Perhaps my favorite piece of her writing was a note that she left me when I was sick.  “I hope you feel better soon. From Clare, to Mom.”