Story Time

A recent achievement of Matt has been in reading. It has improved a lot in the last 2 months since he joined a class of regular kids. Although previously he could read individual words, he now reads sentences! In the last couple of months, he's begun to read to us. He would get a book, either Spot Goes to School or Teachers Are For Reading Stories and sit down in front of us in his little chair. He would open the books so it faced us and read the lines. An audience is required, so we sit and let him read, correcting him gently when he reads a word wrong. His little sister got the hint and she now sits down excitedly in front of kuya when she sees him get a book from the shelf of kids' books.

I guess Matt wants to do it like the teachers do during story time at school. Just this morning, since I was busy in reading email, he sat down in front of his sister and read Spot Goes to School. She would repeat the lines right after kuya said them. My wife did try to let him read Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs & Ham, but he still couldn't follow it much. The rhythmical repeating word patterns seemed to confuse him. Eventually though we hope that as he expands his vocabulary he will be able to read more complex sentences.

He has terrific 'picture' memory in that he remembers words by the patterns of the letters, not the letters themselves. I remember when he was still very young that he was often able to recognize brand names because they often appear in TV ads. It was easy for him to recognize Sony, JVC, Samsung, LG, Canon or Nokia. We soon discovered that if we change the color and fonts on say the word "SAMSUNG" he couldn't recognize it right away. So I guess kids like him really do read in 'pictures'. Even words are pictures for them.

We are excited that he is learning to read and he is doing it in a social way. We can't help but see that having a little sister has made it easier for Matt to open up.