Guess who can R-E-A-D??

I’m so very proud of my McCanless! Since school began, she has been obsessed with writing. (Although, sometimes it is a bit annoying when every loose piece of paper in the house has letters, names, words, the alphabet, or random words copied from magazines printed in 4-year-old manuscript.) She also began spelling words in the car on the way to school that, apparently, are her popcorn words. (I’m still not 100% what that means. I just know that she knows them inside and out!) Her popcorn words are words that she can read and write and spell without a doubt. Words like: on, off, in, out, a, the, I, me, my, etc…

For a while now she has been asking me all about words that she sees on a daily basis. She is fascinated with words on road signs, restaurant menus, and labels. It is so funny to hear her guess a word or try to sound it out. Each week she brings home small books with short sentences. The books began with simple popcorn words and have progressed to more difficult words like toy and boy and even a few like letters, family, and police. Just last night I realized that she was reading a story about a boy and a dog and a washtub! It dawned on me that she can actually read!! Not just sentences like, “My toy.” She was actually reading real sentences!!

She sounds exactly like what you may think: THE…BOY….AND….THE….DOG….etc. and it is sometimes so hard to listen to her and not laugh aloud. She is very articulate and enunciates each word very distinctly. She is also very proud of herself. She reads with a smug look on her face and occasionally stops to look up and smile at me, making certain I’m aware of her great accomplishment.

We have since tackled a few new real books and she loves reading the words that she knows, and sometimes will make up words in place of those that she doesn’t know. Or she’ll skip “reading” all together and make up her own story based on the illustrations. (It depends on her mood or whatever she has time for at that moment. She is still McCanless!)

My little reader is growing up so quickly!

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