Well-Read

Well, today was a momentous occasion here in Drosche Land.  Although, no matter how great it was, it signifies growth and change.  These 2 things are often difficult for me to deal with.  However, the awesomeness of today's victory trumps any (well most) of the sadness over the aforementioned growth and change.  See, today Braeden read a book all by himself for the first time!  Now we have known of his ability for a while.  He has spelled and read words often before, but today was the first time that he actually read an entire book, solo.

Now, admittedly it wasn't War and Peace or anything of that nature; rather it was a phonetic beginning reader, you know the kind.  The title of the story was "Mac" so you can correctly surmise that the sound being targeted was the short a sound.  Amy and Jack were off on one of their grocery shopping trips, leaving Braeden and I to ourselves for a while.  I had brought home some of these little books from school, with the specific thought of getting Braeden started reading before he begins Kindergarten.  Like I mentioned before, we have been able to tell for some time that he is more than ready to start reading.  So, with all other distractions gone I decided to start.  He knows all of his letters and their sounds, so this was the perfect book to begin with.  I read it with him once as he sounded out the words, then I let him read it again.  By this time he had pretty much mastered it so I grabbed the iPad and recorded him!  The reasoning was three-fold.  One I wanted to capture this great event for him to have always, two I wanted him to be able to see himself successfully reading so he could be proud of himself, and three I wanted to share it with everyone via this blog and Facebook!  After watching himself he was extremely proud and wanted to continue to read other books!  So we did tackle another, "Dot and Mit".  No recording this time, but another success!

So, both the parent and the teacher in me are beaming with pride in my boy!  Yes it is rubbing in my face the fact that he (and Jack alike) are growing up far too fast which means that I am getting older.  But my pride overshadows this for the moment and I relish Braeden's new found skills, enthusiasm, and love of reading/learning.  In just a few short weeks he will begin Kindergarten and these things will continue to grow and develop.  He is all too happy to start school again and keeps reminding me that he will just be next door to me!  I can't even begin to think about having him in my class and luckily I don't even have to give that idea any thought for a very long time.  For now we will just live in the moment and its little, or big, victories!

All is well, and now literate, in Drosche Land.

The famous book!

 The video!