OK, the beginning

Over cousins weekend this summer, Eden read her first word by "sounding it out" ... ... o ... k ... O.K.... Okay! Then she ran around the room in circles bouncing up and down singing the song from the PBS show Word World "Let's build a word. Let's build it. Let's build it. We built a word!" She was just a bit excited.

Since then she has really developed an addiction to the phonics website Starfall. She started with individual letters - the site sounds them out, shows them in words, and has songs and games. She now completes words and sentences.

We had one friend who teaches in early childhood development suggest continuing to read repetitive books like "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and "Cat in the Hat." She said that Eden will memorize the stories, see the pictures, and eventually connect the words on the page to ones she is saying.

Although she has ben able to recognize her name for a while (picture mail coming and a 3 year old knowing it's hers), she now looks, says the letters, then says it ... E-D-E-N, Eden! That is usually followed by a big smile, jumping, and/or a crazy dance.

Every day she is sounding out more and more words ... all the time, in fact. Nearly every word is now pronounced by repeating the beginning sound first (i.e. la-la-Lydia, ba-ba-ball). At the dinner table, in the car, in the tub, you name it.  If she's in the mood, she can tell us the first letter of most words if we ask her.

At bedtime we always read 2 books. She has about 10-15 sight words or go-to words that she guesses based on the first letter including God, me, Mom, Dad, CC, it, dog, and cat. The names she guesses based on the first letter of the word include: Graham, Momma, Lydia, Granddaddy, Nona, Ashley, Keegan.

At school, they are learning a letter a week, and she can now write both A and B. Of course, she already knows E ... the first one she wrote was on a thank you note right after Lydia was born.

She likes to practice ...

Wednesday night at dinner she spelled "mom" and "dad" just out of the blue while at the dinner table. She even looked up while she was thinking. It felt like she was in a spelling bee ... "Mom. [eyes look up while she is thinking intently, as if she's seeing the word in her mind] M. O. M. Mom" Then, she smiled.

Eden likes to "type letters on the big white thing." Yesterday, Ashley said, "I bet you could type mom." Then, when she looked down a minute later, Eden had done this ...

All this new exciting stuff makes us want to get little bit started out early as well ...