What do you get when you put one highly exuberant 2 year-old, a literate yet bossy 7 year-old, and 24 books in one room? A little bit of everything, I have to say…
We started off with a refresher on My First Bob Books: Pre-Reading Skills. Last week, Wilson (our reader in training) had a bit of trouble recognizing his shapes, not to mention holding his attention span. This week? “Triangle! Square! Circle!” he shouted when he spied Tanner the Triangle, Seth the Square and Sally the Circle. We read through the first three books with relative ease. Wilson sat still and pointed to the shapes without prompting.
Elizabeth (age 7) then read the first two books from the My First Bob Books: Alphabet set to her younger brother. “What does this letter say?” she asked, pointing to the letter A. “6!” replied Wilson. “No, Wilson, it’s the letter A,” she corrected him in a mothering tone. “What is this letter?” she asked, pointing to the letter B. “B!” shouted Wilson, resulting in a congratulatory “yes!” from the rest of us. Elizabeth read through a few more pages but then–don’t ask me why– things went downhill after that. Both kids began jumping on the bed, giggling uncontrollably and dumping books onto the floor. Then Wilson bit his sister on the arm. “Okay,” that’s it” I said. “Help me get these books back in their boxes.” Putting the books back in order and according to each set was a terrific task to assign to Elizabeth. “Wilson, you put all the red ones together,” she said… and he did! “Now the yellow ones,” she instructed. Amazingly enough, he was able to complete that task as well. Yay, he’s getting better with his colors, I thought. But wasn’t this supposed to be a reading exercise? Then I realized that working on early learning and pre-reading skills such as colors, numbers and shapes doesn’t have to be an organized activity, it can happen on the go; anytime, anywhere.
Got a pre reading tip to share? Let us know.
–Allison
Tags: early literacy, early reading, My First Bob Books, pre literacy skills, pre reading skills, preschool activities
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