Summer Reading Challenge

Children are often liable to take you by surprise, aren't they? 

At the moment, we aren't using any kind of structured learning but we are doing lots of reading and taking advantage of every opportunity. In this environment, over past month, my little one has discovered something awesome.

The glee on her little face when she takes a book off me and says, "Now I'll read it to you mommy," eek! It still makes me grin.

She uses a number of techniques to help her read the story, but I don't think it involves the writing at all. It reminds me of the wordless books that I think form level one of The Oxford Reading Tree. It has also set off a chain reaction in my head of Awesome Things We Can Do Now.

So, how does she do it? 

Firstly, she chooses books that she knows well and recalls the exact words from memory, she uses inflection she's heard from us.

Then she looks at the pictures to jog her memory.

If she can't remember the exact words she sometimes gets frustrated, but she has recently tried substituting similar words (and received a lot of praise for thinking of that idea!)

She has also recalled and re-told the story of Peter Rabbit for me, without the book, in order to create our own little version of the story in a mini-book (thank you, zine-making obsession, I knew it would get me somewhere, even if I never made one of my own!)

This week, she used her new skills to finish her first book in the library Circus Stars challenge.

I'm so excited to see what happens next in our reading journey and I'll be updating the fun reading stuff we get up to on the way :)