learning to read

We're in no rush to teach Tim to read, but he's interested and willing.  The promise of a new toy with the mastery of each book is a big incentive.  Like potty training, we're trying to let him guide us on the skills we tackle.  This worked when he wrote his name at two, much to our surprise and pleasure.  I'm happy to help him learn to read because studies that I've read indicate that children who learn to read early have greater success at learning other things in school, and Tim has always liked books. 

I first learned of the Bob Books last summer from a woman I met at the library.   She was with her son who looked about the same age as Tim.  Tim had picked some books to take home, and we sat down next to the mother and son to look through them.  The boy told Tim that he liked one of them and then offered to read the book to Tim, which he did.  I thought maybe he'd memorized the book, but he actually read it.  I asked his mom how old he was and when she said 4, I asked how he'd learned to read.  She showed me The Bob Books, and I checked one out.  We tried a couple of times but without any interest or success.  I checked them out again when we traveled to South Africa, thinking we could try them on the long flights or layovers.  Again, no interest or success.

Last week, we tried again with great interest and success, so I bought the first set.  It's a phonetic system for learning to read and very popular right now.  There are 12 books of about 6 pages in the set. Each book focuses on two or three new sounds.  Tim has loved the ABC song from a very young age, but it doesn't do much to help with the phonetic alphabet.  It would be a real accomplishment if someone could write a song as catchy as the ABC song using phonetics.