Posted in Homeschooling

Lately Ryan, who is 5, has been making connections between print and speech.  When we first started phonics, I thought he might have dyslexia because he was having so much trouble.  He still may, but I think his speech issues were interfering with his understanding of the sounds.  He had a lot of substitutions: /t/ for /k/, /d/ for /g/, and about 10 more, plus trouble with beginning blends.  He could not say either of the twins' names correctly.

After I realized that people were interpreting his version of "Christopher" as "Jennifer," I asked the speech therapist to work with him on pronouncing it correctly and he learned it pretty quickly.  Today during speech therapy, he spontaneously said, "Alexander" correctly too.  I was so stunned and happy!

Then later he was looking at some animal puzzles we had.  He knew right away that one animal was a crocodile, not an alligator, because it started with c.  Then he was looking at the giraffe and said, "Mommy, I don't know what this is, because it starts with a g, but g says /g/. "  So then I told him that g can make two sounds: /g/ and /j/.  He was amazed and then went through the entire alphabet (by memory) and made me tell him all the sounds the letters made.  It's been awhile since I did phonics, but I think I passed the test LOL! I also had to explain to him today that sometimes k is silent, like in "knee."  So I think we have now skipped a few lessons in Saxon Phonics!

It is always so exciting when they start to read!