Creative Writing!

During the 2014 World Cup, DJ learned numbers (including double digits) from his favorite Celeste jerseys! Sometime since the beginning of this year, he also (somehow!) learned (from games and from watching his sister, we’re guessing) to write the whole alphabet (at least in capital letters).

Now he loves to write out words, letter by painstaking letter, that others spell out for him. And he’ll stick to it until he fills in all the blanks – for instance, on Sunday School papers at church (designed for elementary-aged students)! But he writes some of the letters backward (for example, the “J”) and also starts many of the letters from the bottom. (Should I be concerned about that at this point?)

He likes to write numbers

– forward and backward –

partly to prove that he can!

During half days at K-4, pre-reading skills are taught (for Spanish) and objectives include recognizing and writing the letters in his name and the numbers 1 to 10. Because English is much more challenging (to read and write) than Spanish is, however, I’ve wanted him to learn to read English first. So, several months ago, we started basic reading lessons, using “Reading Eggs” (an online interactive program). We’re only on Lesson 20 out of 120 or so.

It’s been a lot of fun for us to watch DJ take the knowledge he is acquiring and run with it! He’s been trying to write words for a while now, but just yesterday he wrote his first creative sentence:

And I understood!

A note for educator friends:

“Reading Eggs” seems to be structured in similar fashion to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which I used for a bit with E when she was five and a half (before we changed K-5 plans after extended travel to Uruguay that year).