Last week, I shared about how Rynus learned to write his own name in about 20 minutes. And this week, he progressed on to start simple 3 letter words spelling.
First of all, let me make it clear. This post is not to boast about how a 3 years old could read/spell/write words. Trust me that's nothing worth showing off, there are definitely other kids who could do the same and even my own son, Renzo, was 1 year ahead of Rynus achieving milestone like this. I never had any intention to "drill" or "train" my kids to be scholars, what I am doing is purely to observe them closely, give them right exposure at right time to help them achieve what they are capable of doing, and provide a healthy family bonding as well as a conducive learning environment at home. Rynus is surrounded with educational materials often, though he might not touch them all the time. Yes milk bottle sure wins hands down! But at least by exposing him to all these, he has higher chance to pick up something, right?! Of course as parents, our role is to pay close attention and help them discover their own ability. It's just like he could recognize letters, their phonics sounds, but without our intervention, he's not able to tell what's next, when is he suppose to pick up reading or writing. Another school of thoughts suggests that we should not over teach our kids. I definitely agree with that, because I got feedback from Renzo's teacher that he's less focused in class when he already earned the knowledge about the topics being taught. I don't think I am anywhere near over teaching the boys. Even for our 6 years old Renzo who's going to start Primary 1 in next January, we have never given him any assessment books to work on at home. He's given enough at his full day childcare, and he's been coping very well with weekly spelling and 听写, so I do not see the need to over prepare him. He gets to choose whatever activity he wants to be involved, including watching TV with his little brother most of the time.
Now you might want to ask, then why do I need to teach Rynus anything now?
I've mentioned many times that I am not a fan of enrichment lessons or tuition. We are just trying our best to learn together with our kids (they learn knowledge, we learn their learning patterns). When we see that they are on the right track to achieve a milestone, we help to push them and guide them to reach the finishing line. By doing this, hopefully they are well prepared with the right learning attitude and learning skills, and have the ability to cope well with school curriculum without the need to go for extra lessons. Renzo is a great example and the efforts we put in during his pre-school years, get well paid off when he entered K1 because he sees learning rather fun, and never once struggled with homework or weekly spelling tests. I wish Rynus can enjoy the same learning process just as his korkor so setting the foundation right is always important! And looking back at Renzo's growth, and how we brought up Rynus, I realized what we have adopted, is indeed the Montessori method which I loved and believed since Renzo was a baby. The concept suggests parents to act as observers who are always there to guide, and keep kids' enthusiasm alive without interfering with their efforts to teach themselves. Although we didn't send Rynus to a Montessori school (Renzo attended about 4 or 5 lessons when he was young). We got the idea about how it works for young kids, and decided to pretty much follow that method when it comes to early education.
Of course every kid learns at different pace, some of them might not show great interest to anything, others might be more inquisitive and are willing to learn and know everything around them. Just like both of our boys were exposed to Leapfrog at very young age, and they enjoyed and learned almost all the basic stuff from there, but the same set of materials don't really work for all kids, some of the kids couldn't even sit still to finish watching a 30 minutes episode. There's definitely no right or wrong in terms of the methods, or materials we use to coach our kids, just that since I noticed that Rynus is ready, after he went through the phases of learning alphabets -> learning phonics sounds -> tracing letters -> writing letters independently -> "spelling" words with phonics apps, I know it's time to prepare him for the next phase - reading. 
Kids being kids, they absorbs fast at this age but at the same time, they might not have full self awareness to understand what they can really achieve. And I often hear mummies complaining their kids only like to play, whose kid doesn't?! But we must understand, kids learn through play too. So we give the boys all the freedom they need at home, with proper guidance and control of course (yes that;s Montessori method). I don't nag at Renzo for playing his toys as long as he has finished all his homework. For Rynus, since he's still young, we let him decide what he likes to do, and we just participate and join in the fun together, even if that means to lie down on the floor and stare at Thomas training round and round on the track. Or to sit besides him, listen to him answering Dora's questions one by one. Rynus started using this "Phonics Rocks" app on my iphone about 2 months ago, for about 10 to 15 minutes a day. With my own experience coaching Renzo in the past, I felt that he's ready to spell some 3 letter words after he mastered the skill to figure out how to spell 3 letter words based on phonic sounds of each letter. So these few nights, we started guiding him with simple 3 letter words spelling. Okay so how does this help with his reading skills exactly?
I've mentioned this, in a post about Renzo's assessment at "I CAN READ" school when he was 3+..
"... Lastly he was tested on the first sound, last sound and middle sound of words like "elephant", "fish", "hen", etc, I heard that kids usually struggle with middle sounds, but I bet Renzo's ability to recognize middle sounds, must be the clincher for the teacher to decide which class he's qualified to attend at the end."
Back then Renzo couldn't write words (fine motor skill not as good as Rynus and no strength to grip pencil well), but he could pretty much read and spell well, and I strongly believe that has something to do with his ability to recognize first, middle and last sound of the words. With that experience, I have always been paying attention to Rynus in the same aspect. Rynus is very good with his first sound, but for the middle sound and last sound, he's still not able to break the words down that way.
For example, I asked him to write the word "CAT", it took him a little while, but just by hearing the word, "CAT", he managed to spell it out independently, that's a sign that he could tell the phonics sounds of each letter in this word, "C", "A", "T".
But another 3 letter word like RUN, he could only spell it as "R", then turned around and said to me, "Mummy, I am stuck!". So I had to make the phonics sound of "U" and "N", before he could write down the letters "U" and "N" which make the phonics sounds of /ŭ/ and /n/.
At the same time, he did form some weird words like "CUG", "CIT" randomly, and wrote some words like "BIG", "BET" based on his own memory as those words appeared in the "Phonics Rocks" app. But I have no plan to correct him for now, with my experience on coaching Renzo, this is just another phase, I am sure Rynus will gradually move on to the next level. I also mentioned this in Renzo's blog after his I CAN READ assessment:So I strongly believe that Renzo reads mainly by sight words, his strong phonic foundation helps but it's not all about phonics, when they are not trained with a proper system on how to read, breaking down the words or relating them to something they know, is the way most people learn to read. For example, if they know how to read "rice", most likely they will figure out words like "price", "thrice"..
Back then we didn't quite know how to teach Renzo to read, but after we decided not to send him for I CAN READ enrichment lessons, we did started our own way of guiding him to focus on first and last sounds, then figuring out middle sound with simple 3 letter words.
For Rynus, most of these 3 letter words he wrote, he needs some help to break down the word by sounding out the phonics sounds. But that's already a great start to build the foundation, what will happen next, is that slowly, he will be able to break down the words and sound of each phonic sounds of the first, last, as well as the middle letter, of course the middle letter usually is the toughest. And by doing that, he will then be able to blend the letters together and sound out the words, yes that's READING! Of course, I don't mean to just "read" like this..
P/S: just for record purpose, Renzo was able to recognize/pronounce 3 letter words at 2 years 1 month old, read simple sentence like "The cat has a hat" independently at 2 years 5 months old, spell out 3 letter words at 2 years 8 months old. Of course when comes to writing he was slower than Rynus, I am hoping that baby Rynus could start reading in another 1 year time!
