Toddlers Who Can Read

5/3

The kids were a whirlwind of activity this morning, climbing over the edge of the couch and sliding down, hiding socks and clothes in the toy box, measuring cups under the couch, and their play food in I don’t know how many places around the house. At least they are at a stage where they play together very well.

This afternoon we drove out to my sister’s house, about an hour away from us. Her house is bigger then ours, and the twins love running around in a huge circle through the front room, the dining room, around the kitchen, through the living room and circling around the front room to where they started.

Jared was such a ham. He’d stop in front of us sitting at the dining room table, yell Bye-bye and then make his little loop til he came back to us again. Then he’d be at it again.
My sister has this huge foam alphabet puzzle. Jared especially loved fitting the letters into their correct spots. I love to see his little forehead furrowed in concentration.

As for Alexa, she impressed my sister’s husband’s brother-in-law with her reading abilities. My sister has all these cards with words on them. Alexa kept taking words off the stack, reading them and handing them to him. He came up to me at the end of the evening and, after complementing me on how beautiful the kids were (always nice to hear!) he commented on how amazed he was that Alexa could read so many words. I didn’t even tell him that she could identify and sound out all the letters of the alphabet from 18 months, and could now read simple books if you put your finger under each word. Again, I know that she does seem to love words much more than a lot of kids, but I do believe if more babies and toddlers were introduced to letter sounds and words in context , you’d see a lot more toddlers reading and it wouldn’t be such a big deal.