Read it to me, Sista!

Houston, we have a reader! 

We celebrate this milestone by mourning the end of a beloved era as we look ahead toward the horizon of never being able to spell-speak in her presence.

Our journey to this new frontier has been delayed as long as possible.  Sienna was under the impression that she would get to learn how to read as soon as she was old enough to start school.  She came home from the first day of preschool dragging her bottom lip because they didn't get to practice any reading.  Much to her disappointment there was never time to practice sounding out words during preschool that entire year.

Her preschool teacher knew Sienna was ready and dying to read, but that wasn't exactly part of the preschool curriculum, she had a full class that year and so she gave me some tips and suggested I work with her at home.  On one or 20 occasions (per day) Sienna also suggested I help her work on sounding out words at home too.  And we did.  As much as possible.  Which wasn't much at all....

As luck would have it, The Girl Who Desperately Wanted To Read's mother never had enough time between changing a thousand diapers, preparing and cleaning up after a thousand snacks and chasing a thousand little brothers around the house to sit down with her and practice reading for her to get very far.

We did and do read books every single day.  We always have and hopefully always will, but when we read we usually read aloud as a family and most toddler members of the family prefer it to be done by someone who had a little more fluency than a pre-reader.

Hope began to grow for The Girl Who Desperately Wanted To Read when kindergarten started and she realized she would most definitely surely learn to read.  And learn she did!  Very quickly!   Her teacher is like a magical fairy godmother-  in fact, the very kind you read about in a good book.  With a wave of her wand (so it seemed) our eager reader went from sounding out word after word to really reading in just a few weeks!

Here is a video I took of her reading a new BOB book in September.  Just a couple weeks after starting school.

Now that we've had a few months of practice and a lot more sight words under her belt she's quite the book worm!

It melts my heart to hear her reading books to her brothers.  She even has her inflections in all the right places.  I love the way she reads new books with such care.  She can't stand to get it wrong.  She'll read each line carefully under her breath and then repeats it aloud as if she were reading for a theater audition.


To my dear Little Reader,

You worked so hard.  You've wanted this for so long.  Congratulations, sweetheart!  You reached for the moon and became one of the stars.  I hope you'll read this little memory one day and know how much we loved riding along the way right by your side as you became a reader.  Welcome to the book club!

Love,

Your proud mommy