learning to read

The animals are still going strong in Otis’s life. Although he doesn’t spend much time playing with his small, plastic animals anymore, our lives, and especially our mealtimes, are consumed by animals. The kid can’t remember what he ate for lunch 5 minutes ago, but he can remember the minutiae of the lives and loves of all animal beings and he loves to discuss those facts at length. But I guess I shouldn’t complain, since the animals have propelled him to learn new things. He never really doodled much, and only started drawing once he really became immersed in the animals. And now the animals are his tools for learning to read and write words.

For some time now, he’s been copying animal names out of his books. We find pages and pages filled with lists of animals like this:

Sometimes they’ll say things like “Dinosaurs. Fun Facts! Did you know?” since he’s copying from his animals books and magazines. And slowly but surely, he’s moved on to sounding out written words and spelling or asking us to spell spoken words. We’ve discovered that it can be difficult to define hard and fast rules, and we sigh dramatically and roll our eyes towards the heavens whenever the blasted schwa comes up. But it’s fun for a couple of nerds like F and me, and we love to think about Otis reading as much as we did as kids, resorting to the classic tricks like Reading In Bed Until Your Mom Comes In To Yell At You For Ruining Your Eyes By Reading While Lying Down, closely followed by Reading Under The Covers With A Flashlight.