Thursday, August 12, 2010

A Letter to Granddad

Liam has decided that he wants to learn how to read.  I honestly believe that he's halfway there already but I don't think he realizes that.  I think he reads more than he lets on.

He has the fundamentals down pat - he knows his letters and the sounds they make, he can write them all, there are even a number of words he really can read that he learned in pre-school.  He just needs to be able to put the blocks together and build his reading castle.

To that end, I asked my father-in-law, Tom, if he would help Liam.  I'm afraid that if I try to do it, Liam and I will butt heads and get frustrated.  I don't want to turn him off of reading because of frustration with me.  Tom, on the other hand, taught elementary school for over 30 years and is a fantastic teacher.  Who better to teach Liam?  When I asked, he was happy to help.

After I got off the phone with Tom, I told Liam that Granddad was going to work with him on reading sometime soon.  I warned him that it would take practice but that I knew he could do it. 

Out of nowhere, Liam piped up that he wanted to send Granddad a card to remind him about the reading lessons.  Well, he was in luck because I'm into cardmaking/scrapbooking and I have a ton of supplies sitting upstairs.  When Jamie went down for his nap that day, Liam and I sat down in the office to make a card for Granddad.

Designed, executed, and written by Liam (with a little technical help from me), here is his card to Granddad:

Granddad loves pigs, thus the stamp choice

It says "Granddad, I'm looking forward to reading with you!  Liam"

"Hand stamped for you by: Liam"

Have I mentioned that my kid is made of awesome?  He's made of awesome.

7 comments:

  1. That is impressive. I'll also point out that his handwriting is already better than my second grader's.

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  2. He did a couple of practice stamps on scrap paper before he stamped the card - every single practice stamp could have gone on the card. I couldn't believe how good he was at it!

    The handwriting was cracking me up. I keep wanting to draw two googly eyeballs in the middle of "lOOking."

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  3. Now this one made me cry. What a great daughter-in-law you are!! Will you be mine?
    Love you Cari, Auntie Lin

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  4. Anytime, Auntie Lin, and you know! I love you!

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  5. Jesus, Cari! He's already passed the invented, letter-name, and moved into within word patterns. In fact, he may be ready for syllables and affixes. Actually, his ability to add inflectional endings tells me that he's already in syllables and affixes, but the sample is too small for me to commit. ;)

    I've taught forth and fifth graders who didn't spell this well. I started out teaching highly-gifted children and I'm still extremely impressed with his encoding abilities. I guess that's what happens when mum and dad are ultra-smart nerds.

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  6. Oh no! Pixie, you misunderstand! That's where the technical help from me came in - we decided what he wanted to say and then I spelled it all out for him and helped him figure out the punctuation. That was NOT something he did on his own.

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  7. D'oh! I should have spotted parental help from a mile away. But, I did have children who could do that at his age. Either way, good work mum! An environment where literacy is valued and used for real-world applications produces children who value literacy and understand its importance.

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