Helping Gavin read

Gavin likes to think that he doesn’t need a nap anymore. But if he doesn’t get a nap most days, I’m about ready to lock him in his room before dinner. For a while I would lay down with him so he would go to sleep faster and not play around trying to keep himself awake. But then he started to throw fits and refuse to go to sleep, if I didn’t lay down with him. After many days of him getting in trouble for not napping, and my telling him that I can never lay down with him again because of his behavior, we think we have discovered why he wanted it so much. That was the only time that he had my attention all to himself. So I am now making a conscious effort to make sure that I am spending a few minutes with just him between lunch and nap. This makes his nap not quite long enough but he doesn’t fight me about going to sleep.

Since he has started to show such an interest in letters, we have been practicing his reading during “our time.” I write down a word and have him sound out the letters as I write, and then he puts the sounds together. He’s doing really well. Then I sound out a word and he writes the letters that make the sounds to spell the word. I don’t think it will be too much longer before he’ll be reading street signs that we pass, like Saedi did in Monterey.

We had a neighbor family over for dinner tonight, and Nate overheard this little snippet. Saedi was talking to Cassie (the neighbor her age) about a book. They were probably not including him (as usual) so Gavin declared, “You know Saedi I’m going to be reading books someday soon, too!”

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