LaPaz Home Learning

I posted earlier about a mystery involving my non-reading 4yo, JBug and her seeming ability to read color words. I decided to do a bit more investigating.
I know JBug cannot sound out words yet. She just is not ready for that-believe me, I’ve tried. But she CAN recognize her name when she sees it (we’ve been working on that one forever) so I wondered how she would do with other “sight words.”
On small note cards I wrote (in bold purple marker) her name, along with the names of her siblings (4 of ‘em), mommy, daddy, Caleb and Connor (my grandsons), horse, dog, and cat. I laid them out on the floor told her we would play a game. Hooray! She loves games! So I pointed to each card as I read them to her. Then I asked her to read them to me. She got every one right within minutes! I shuffled them around-still right! We played some games with the cards (put Caleb next to mommy… who is next to daddy? etc) and she really can read them! So I decided to take it a step further. I wrote the words “I” and “love” on cards. I put them down then put the daddy card after them, then I read it to her. I swapped the last card around a few times and asked her to read them. She easily understood that it said “I love Caleb” or “I love cat.” Then we switched the cards to read “dog love cat” and other combinations. We were having fun! Then she pulled a trick on me. She put her name, then love, then Emily (big sis). I asked her what it said. She said “I love Emily.” Notice she used the term “I” for herself when she used the card with her name!
It is so funny. I always thought the phonics part-sounding out the letter sounds-came before sight words, as that is how all my other children learned to read. But JBug is proving to me (yet again) the uniqueness of each child and how they each learn in their own way and their own time. So with her, I will have to re-learn how to teach reading, using a sight-word approach, as she is so ready to learn this way. And I just can’t wait until the whole world of books is opened up to another eager young mind. It is truly a beautiful thing to see.