I am so excited, I can't even begin to tell you!  My 5 year old son James is a reader! 

We started doing phonics when he was 4, using Frontline Phonics.  But he never got into that.  He wasn't into the phonics songs and coloring pages.  So this year, when he began Kindergarten, we switched to Phonics Museum, which he really likes.  Along with that I started teaching phonograms on my own.  We started with -at words.  For quite a while he was able to sound out all the letters in the words but he was having a hard time blending them all together.  The sounds just weren't translating into words for him.  My then 3 year old son Ryan picked this up easier than James did, and if you read my blog a couple of months ago, I was worried that Ryan would read before James.  But eventually it did click for him and he could read the -at words and we moved on to -an words.  Then one day I got tired of waiting for the point in the curriculum where it said to read the books.  So far we were just reviewing letter sounds, most of which he already knew but I have this problem with skipping pages (I know, I need to do something about that). So I got out  a reader and sat down with him to see what he could do.  And lo and behold, he did GREAT!  He read most of the book with only minimal help from me.    It was the most exciting moment of my life!   Well, maybe not THE most exciting but it is definitely up there.  My biggest fear upon embarking on our homeschooling journey was teaching reading.  It seemed to me to be the most difficult thing  you could teach a child.  I felt if I could just teach him to read, then I could teach him anything.  And the amazing part is, we didn't even need those expensive phonics curriculums.  All we needed really was a white board with dry erase markers and actual books.  We still work on the phonics curriculum to reinforce all the letter sounds and to teach other phonics rules, but the biggest part of our reading curriculum is just sitting down and having him read to me everyday.  He is still slow, so meaning does get lost on him sometimes, but he is progressing so nicely and I am just so excited for him.  Moments like this are why I wanted to homeschool.  I can't imagine missing out on this big milestone.  I feel so privileged to have been able to help him on this journey and to have witnessed it firsthand. 

So, one down two to go!  Ryan is progressing nicely and will probably be reading by the end of this school year.  And little Paulie (19 months old) is off to a great start.  He can recognize his own name!  He LOVES to color.  So much so that in one weekend he managed to color our front door twice as well as our tabletop.  Neither of my other two were this artistically inclined so I wasn't prepared for this!  He even holds the crayon/marker/pen the proper way, without me ever showing him how.  Hopefully he keeps this habit :)  But anyway, whenever he was at our whiteboard easel coloring, I would come over and write out his name, spelling it as I went, and then saying Paul after I was done.  I really never expected him to actually learn it, I was just exposing him to it.  Then the other day we were at my parents' house and he was coloring with his brand new color wonder markers (can you guess why I bought those?) and I was doodling along with him.  I wrote out his name without saying a word, I was just kind of doing it absentmindedly and when I finished, he looked at it and said "Paul".  I was totally shocked.  Just goes to show that they are listening, even when you don't think they are!