Discovering Reading

Just yesterday morning, my son was reading aloud. I thought that I was hearing things. He was reading clearly and it was a proper story.

Stunned, I walked out of my bedroom, half-awake.
There he was, holding a book, seated on the sofa. It was the weekly storybook his school puts in his school bag to encourage the kids to read.

I was AMAZED. He could actually read the words without help!
There's some repetition but he could point out the words and read them clearly.

Upon finishing the book, he got a round of applause from my maid and me. He looked so proud.
Immediately, he dashed off to his room and picked another book.
HE WAS HUNGRY FOR MORE!

Well, he did not learn to read overnight. It was consistent hard work from us at home and the teachers at school.


What did we do with him?
We do not have a fixed 'structure' or 'syllabus' to teach him. It was more of experiental learning :)

1. I created my own set of flashcards on PPT. One set had pictures on one slide with the corresponding words on the next slide. The other set had purely words only. It was more for expansion of vocabulary rather than reading (especially the pictures ones), but he picked up and recognised certain words from there. However, being a FTWM, I only have weekends to show this to him. And not all weekends as some weekends are spent at my mum's place. So, I printed out the softcopies into proper flashcards. Expensive but worth the effort as he likes handling the cards too.
2. We bought some books that came with flashcards (sight words) from Popular Bookstore. He loved the colourful cards and used to play with them by just flipping through them and building 'houses' with the cards. Well, we did not flash the cards to him like recommended methods of Glenn Doman/Shichida. We simply read the word on the card which he was holding and looking at. 
3. I ordered some DVDs/VCDs on sight words and phonics. He simply loves them. His fave: LEAPFROG SERIES. He learnt all his phonics from there. He's able to do simple blending now and we do emphasize on that with him. 
4. Spell out any word he is interested in. He recently started to love pizza. Everytime he sees a pizza, he'll get so excited. Then we will spell 'pizza' (usually in a self-created, silly tune) and he will remember it very well! We tried this at the supermarket with fruits and numbers and it worked very well. He can spell from 1-12 and can also spell many other fruits. Not a consciencious effort to force him to learn to spell, just a fun tune while he's exposed to the particular item!

Exposure is key and even if they do not seem interested at first, link reading to their fave topics/cartoons and they will start to love it!