This is as much for my records and personal journal as it is for everyone else to read.
I have been delaying this post thinking that it really isn't true... Makenna is reading. After her outstanding preschool conferences a few weeks ago, I came to the realization that the things she can do are not typical for most kids her age (and I say "I" because Josh claims he already had this all figured out :). I really had nothing else to base her progress on since she is my first child. I figured she was ahead of the curve but didn't realize how far ahead. After her preschool teacher recommended us to an enrichment program here in town, we were trying to make a decision whether we would send her for math or reading (I refuse to send her for both at this age). In trying to figure out if Makenna was ready for the reading class, I talked to my friend Jen who was a kindergarten teacher for 12 years. After having a lengthy discussion about Makenna's abilities, she told me that Makenna is farther along than most kindergartners and has been giving us the signs of being ready to read for months now. Little did I know. So she gave me ideas about how to approach reading with Makenna. I bought a fun reading game that requires the child to put together 3 "puzzle" pieces - it forms a picture and at the bottom it also forms a 3 letter word. The first one we tried was a picture of a pan with an egg in it. She put the puzzle together easily and as she was doing so said "Look Mommy I'm putting together a picture of an egg." I thought for sure this wasn't going to work because the word on the bottom of the cards was "pan". Anyway, so she got it together and I told her to sound out the letters at the bottom and put them together. Within seconds she had "pan". After doing a few I was still skeptical so I flipped the cards over where there are just letters and no pictures. I would put a word together ("cat" "dog" "pig") and she could sound these all out and read them. You should have seen me literally jump for joy the first time I realized she was actually reading! She didn't understand why Mommy was so excited but she got excited too :) We have continued to slowly work on her reading and she seems to really enjoy it. As we drive places and she sees words on signs that she can read she loves to point them out to me :) Yesterday she wanted to sit on my lap at the computer and have me type words so she could read them. On the math side of things, we just realized that she can identify numbers up through 30 as well.
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