I'm fascinated by Helena's self initiated learning to read process. I had been thinking to start working more consistently with her on things, but I'm way too fascinated by her own natural progression to dare interfere with it.
At present she knows pretty much all of the capital and small letters and the sounds they make. Only thing I can take credit for is occasionally reading alphabet books (*very* occasionally) and providing her with an alphabet puzzle. She just learns SO fast that this has been enough. Now that she's in school, she is of course "learning" letters, but it's mostly just total review. She already knew them.
She has also begun rhyming non stop. All day long sometimes I hear things like "Leaf and beef... THOSE RHYME!"
Additionally, she is identifying the first and last sounds of words on a regular basis. "Dddd - D is for door" ... a pause... "and Rrrrr is the end sound - R". She still has a much harder time coming up with middle sounds, especially on one syllable words. I think the vowel just blends in with the consonant in her mind still. However on 2 syllable words such as butter, she can easily pick out the middle consonant sound.
She is very eager to read - actually thinks in the last few days that she *can* read because she has memorized this easy reader from school as well as mostly memorized a few longer stories we have.
Soon I think.... sometime in the next handful of months, just as rhyming and beginning/end sounds have clicked fully all of a sudden, the concept of blending those individual letter sounds into words will click as well. And then she'll be reading up a storm!!
Other skills she's learning - she is constantly doing math on her fingers, mostly addition. And she's finally interested in writing. For a long time she wanted to know the letters, but had no interest in writing them. Lately she takes construction paper, makes lines across it and then fills in the lines with letters. Various little pictures adorn the sides of the page. It's her first book, she tells me, and she's torn between giving it away for free to the little girl in Guatemala that we help support, or selling it.
