Addie Reads (barely)

As I mentioned yesterday, it seems like Addie has made a crazy amount of some sort of brain development in the last couple of weeks. Suddenly her artwork is meaningful and her name is written more clearly. She can even spell a few words! So, being the curious mommy that I am, I thought I'd test her reading abilities. Mind you, she's only 4.5 years old.

I pulled out the "Dog and Cat" book, which was the very first book that Ellie read all by herself, at age 4 years and 9 months. How is it possible that Addie is approaching that age too? Can she really read? Surely not. She's not yet in the classroom that Ellie was in when she started reading!

At first glance of the book, I asked her what the name of it is. She hesitated. I pointed to the dog. She said "Dog" so I pointed at the word and asked her what it said. She hesitatingly said "Dog and... Cat" I looked at her with suspicion and she looked at me wide-eyed scared I was going to say it was wrong. Like this was some sort of test or something. I suppose it was.

First page into it, we started looking one word at a time.

Mommy: What's this word?
Addie: I don't know.
Mommy: These two letters make a TH sound.
Addie: The!
Mommy: And this one?
Addie: Dog.
Mommy: What's this word?
Addie: Ummm...
Mommy: Let's sound it out. "i...ssss"
Addie: Is!
Mommy: Good. And the last word?
Addie: Old! The dog is old!!!

I stared at her for a moment, and she stared back, almost like a deer in headlights. It was as though she was just as astonished as me.

Mommy: Ok, next page. Do you remember what this word was? You saw it on the first page.
Addie: The?
Mommy: Good.
Addie: Cat. ummm....
Mommy: Remember to say the two sounds and then try to say them quickly. eh...sssss.
Addie: Is fat!

Her eyes were bright with disbelief as we stared at each other.

Ok, so it wasn't perfect, but she was able to read the words following words on her own: dog, cat, old, fat and the.

The third sentence went a little slower.
Addie: The old old dog (no problems)...

The sentence was "The old old dog can't chase the fat cat." She needed quite a bit of help with the word chase and we stopped at that point.

Tired and completely astonished at her own abilities, we tucked her into bed. As we were leaving the room, we could hear her whispering to herself, "The old old dog can't chase the fat cat."

Too cute.