Reading and Writing

I've been wanting to document the twins' reading and writing progress for awhile. With special attention to Eden's, as there's little documentation so far that she can read or write. We knew she could do both because we have caught her a couple of times when she wasn't paying attention. 

In regards to reading, there was a time her Grandma Navis made a mailbox at her house and put letters in envelopes so the kids could play mail. Eden eagerly opened her envelope and read her letter out loud. It was something like:

"Dear Eden,

We are so happy that you came to our house! 

We will play and have supper together. 

I love you so much,

Love,

Grandma"

Or we will be driving along and she'll read the name of a store or a sign on the road. She clearly could not have memorized these words or be guessing based on pictures. 

Yet, we couldn't get any video. When we asked her to read for us, she said she can't or she didn't want to read. Much like this:

But happily, on this same occasion ^^ I suggested (again) to her that she take it one word at a time, which reminded her of a song. (You have to listen pretty carefully to hear her read, but she's doing it.)

Since then, it seems as though she has relaxed and the pressure is off. She'll generally read now if we ask her to, and will read books to her sister from time to time as well. Her favorite way to read currently is for her and Bash to take turns reading the voices of characters or lines from Dr. Seuss books (some of which she has memorized, but some of it is legit reading.) This is very fun, but imagine reading "Fox in Sox" with two four year olds each taking a page... it takes forever! The last time we did this, about half-way through, Eden told me, "My mouth is tired!"

 This is reading "Frog and Toad," a book that we had recently gotten from the library. Maybe partly memorized, but certainly not all of it.

In regards to writing, Eden has a similar performance anxiety that we haven't broken through yet. She writes her name regularly, and she has written all the letters before - again when we are not paying any attention. But as soon as we want her to try to write something, she says she can't.
We're in no hurry, though, there's plenty of time; she's only four.

Sebastien has no problems reading or writing in front of a camera, mostly because I don't think he has the least bit of self-consciousness to him. He writes his alphabet often. He reads whenever he gets a chance.

One day when we were doing workbooks, Bash was reading instructions and following them, and then he just took off and started writing numbers. I had not seen him do this before; I had not been working with him on this. He just tried and did it. (These next two videos are one video broken into two parts.)

So, there you have it. Two kids who are reading and writing at four years old. I'm proud as a peacock. Though, certainly if they weren't, I'd be just as proud just because they are who they are. Two delightful, inquisitive, creative, kind and funny little kiddos.