Less than two months ago, Abby came home with a letter from her Preschool teacher saying she had mastered her alphabet and knows what sound each letter makes, so she will begin to learn phonics.

They breezed through the concept of syllables the following week and Abby came home one day and clapped to the sound of each letter in "C-A-T" and announced, "Cat has 3 syllables!" Well, not quite, but I didn't understand what she was doing until I talked to her teacher a few days later. She told me that the kids were focusing on the sound of each letter, clapping for each letter as if they were separate syllables, which helps them understand about blending the sounds together.

This was fascinating.

At the end of last year we had attended an information night for a local charter school and the Kindergarten teacher spoke to the parents about the different reading levels of 5 year old students. Blending sounds is one of those things that each kid needs to figure out on their own. Some can master the sounds of letters - even complex letter combinations - but not understand how to blend those sounds together for a long time.

So, imagine our surprise when a couple of weeks later, Abby picked up the Fun with Phonics "Fat Cat" book and could sound out and consistently read every "short a" word introduced in that book. She then did the same for all the words in "Jen the Hen."

The problem with Abby is that she's got a great, great memory, which means that I was actually skeptical about her actually "reading," thinking that she was probably memorizing the letter combinations and spouting it back at us. So, I talked to her teacher and she recommended the series of BOB books. The mostly black/white pictures didn't distract kids as much as they're learning to focus on the words on the pages.

We looked at the boxed sets and Abby refused to touch Set 1 (Beginning Readers), hanging on to the books of Set 2, begging me to get them instead.

For a couple of weeks the 12 books in this set were thrown around the back of our van between Kayleigh and Abby. Abby made up stories based on the pictures in the book. She really loved the size of them and was constantly flipping through them during car rides. During this whole time, neither Paul nor I read to her a single page from these books....we just hadn't gotten to them.

A few days ago, on the ride home from school, she picked up and read TWO ENTIRE BOOKS ("Sox the Fox" and "The Red Hen") from cover to cover, stopping to ask for help only twice! She has gotten very good at reading individual words and is now reading short sentences and COMPREHENDING the story being told.

I must say I'm completely blown away by how quickly reading has come together. Once a few pieces start to click into place, figuring out the rest seems to follow smoothly. It's only been about 6-7 weeks since we got that note telling us Abby would begin phonics.

I'm amazed that her teacher can accomplish so much in such a short time. She first taught Abby when Abby was 2 years old, but she was frustrated with the younger kids. This teacher likes a challenging, structured educational environment and she felt that at 2, a lot of kids were still not developmentally ready to be in a structured learning environment. Her philosophy seems to be that kids have no bounds to learning and can achieve anything given the opportunity. So, she started teaching Preschool 2, the 3.5 to 4 year olds. She provides endless challenges to these kids and is willing to help any of them - and help the parents help their kids - to achieve. We have been extremely lucky to see Abby thriving in her class.

There are kids in Abby's class who have picked up reading even quicker, but some who are still working on sounding out the letters. Regardless, all of them are exposed to these lessons and concepts, which puts them in a better position than a lot of kids their age as they head to Kindergarten.

A couple of great reading resources that have worked well with Abby are:

- Blend ladders (thanks to Holly for recommending these!), which can be downloaded here. We laminated a set and use them with magnetic letters on a cookie sheet for games.

- Website called Starfall.com, containing basic ABCs, interactive stories and activities geared towards learning to read.We're so, so, so, so PROUD of our Abigail!!! :)