Sprouting

Mateo has been working really hard on the Headsprout reading program over the past few months, and having a lot of fun, too. We've been doing it every day before naptime. I do it with him on weekdays and he and Sacha do it together on weekends. He asks for it every day and seems to be having fun as well as learning a lot. I can hardly believe it, but he's almost finished the program. There are 80 lessons and he did number 76 today. We hit a point right after lesson 40 when the program stepped up a notch in terms of pace and difficulty and we wondered if it might be getting too challenging for him for right now.

Then, he seemed to hit a tipping point and during the last couple of weeks he's been picking up learning new words and skills like crazy. It reminds me of when he was learning to talk and he went through that developmental stage where they learn like six new words a day. Yesterday, he read a Headsprout story called "Mars, the Fourth Planet." Even though Sacha and I have been right there with him from the beginning, watching him read now still just blows us away. From what I understand, this program is supposed to take kids to the point that they can start reading beginning reader books and continue their learning that way. That does seem to be what's happening.

The thing that makes me happiest about this whole experience is that he can read some books and stories himself now, generally with us sitting with him and running our fingers under each word, and that he loves it. Sacha, in her teacherly way, got a bunch of books from the library that are about at his level and so he has fun stories that he can read and build confidence with. We're not quite sure what we'll do after he finishes Headsprout, but I think a celebration is in order! And then hopefully a lifelong love of reading after that.