Lately I’ve definitely been letting the phonics part of preschool slide because Tommy has all his sounds down but wasn’t ready as of a couple months ago to start putting them together to sound out words. This week, though, he rediscovered the foam letter stickers in the art box and asked for a preschool project with them. I decided we’d pick words and work backwards, sounding them out and finding the sticker letters that made each part of the word. (We stopped for him to draw the picture after we finished each word.)
He did really well! When we got to the A in CAT, he got impatient about finding the sticker and told me, “I can write an A.” Now, I have really been resisting writing because things I’ve read say that kids this age don’t really have the fine motor skills to form letters correctly and it’s better to wait rather than form bad habits now. But Tommy had somehow learned by osmosis how to write an A. And a C and an H. (Derek recently discovered that he apparently knew all the letters to spell “I love Nona” as well.) So I’m giving in and pulling out the alphabet tracing books. I know my intense personality and that my struggle is always going to be against pushing him (the firstborn of two firstborns!) too hard. In this case, though, I think I was overcompensating and holding him back from something he’s excited to do. I’m not saying he’s gifted (!), just that I need to pay closer attention to what he’s interested in. And this Jessie Wise article gives me a good overarching perspective of the whole reading/writing process…homeschooling certainly is a learning experience for me!