Sophie, Reading and Writing

This weekend we had a Sophie-Sleep-Over. It is fascinating to observe her progress in reading & writing after a few months in kindergarten–she knows many “sight words,” carefully uses her knowledge of phonics to sound out words, and is writing sentences such as “You are good.” “You are bad.” “You have a bad dog.” (No, we don’t have a dog.) She wrote the sentences on “tickets” that she gave me & Linda when we played a game Sophie organized–“pool.” Sophie was the life guard, I was the swimmer, who periodically needed to be rescued, & Linda sat by the pool reading the Sunday New York Times (her condition for playing). We got the “You are bad.” tickets for talking to each other, instead of “swimming” and reading. We celebrate Sophie’s 5th birthday on 12/8. It’s a cliche, I know, but my, how time flies! I have no memories of learning how to read, although I’m pretty sure I was never taught phonics. My only school-reading-memory is feeling utterly humiliated when my third grade teacher, Miss Anderson, called out the names for reading groups and I wasn’t in the “top” group with all my friends. As for writing, I learned during the days of the Peterson method & was never able to replicate that lovely orderly legible script. (My brain was always ahead of my hand, I suspect.) On the last day of November & before a very busy week, Linda & I drew great tiles during our nightly Scrabble game–note: my “adenoid” and Linda’s “heaven.” (as always, click on pic for a larger image). p.s. don’t worry about “zone” just missing the “triple word” square–remember we don’t keep score. Happy December!

#Kindergarten #Memories #Reading #Sleepover