Reading with Liam

"When can I read the first Harry Potter book?" Liam asked me the other day.

"When you can read it yourself," I said. Of course, he immediately claimed that he can read it himself in his head, now. Which I know to be untrue. So I amended "When you can read it out loud to me, then."

Now, they don't really start reading books until class two at Orana. In class one (where Liam is now) they learn to write, and they read only what they have written (or what their teacher writes on the board). They haven't done much in the way of phonics yet, although they have learned about the 'magic e' that sits silently at the end of words and makes the preceding vowel long. And they have learned about sentences, pausing (for a count of three no less) after every full stop. I think they'll be learning about 'blends' - 'st', 'tr' 'sh' etc - in their next English main lesson* (at the moment they are in a math main lesson).

So when I said "when you can read it to me", I really meant "maybe next year". However, Liam's response was "Yay, can we start today?" And we did.

When he first opened the book, he was a little dismayed. "I thought the writing would be bigger," he said. But he pushed on, helped by using a book mark under the line to keep his place. We read two pages the first day - me filling in the words he didn't know. I made/helped him 'sound out' a few of the easier words. And I was amazed by some of the words he read without pausing, like 'concentrated'. But he also got lots of quite simple words right some of the time and wrong other times, depending on context and how closely he was paying attention - he's already taken to scanning rather than looking at each word.

I thought he would probably leave it after that experience, but no - we read another page before school the next morning, and then two more that night. But the next day I went to the library and borrowed three Zac Power books - which have large print and are far more age appropriate. We started the first one that afternoon, getting through three chapters before I said 'enough', and then read the other three chapters (finishing the book), before Liam went to bed that night. He then got up before 6:30 the next morning - which was yesterday - and we could hear him out in the living room, reading it aloud again. Which he did again this morning.

We haven't started the next book yet because I've been at work since then, and he had footy training last night so we didn't have our usual before bed reading time. But I promised him we could start it tonight.

I have to say, all in all I'm a pretty proud parent. I know he's behind other kids his age in conventional school systems. But considering where he's up to in his own school program, he's really well advanced. And I can easily see that before we know it he'll be hiding his torch under his pillow at night so he doesn't have to stop reading when we tell him it's lights out time.

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*Main lesson is a Steiner concept I think. They have one long lesson a day - after morning circle time - which is called main lesson. Each main lesson topic runs for two or three weeks, and is either maths, literacy, or social science focussed. Then they have 'practice lessons' later in the day. When they have a maths main lesson, they will still have English practice lessons, but they won't learn new literacy concepts. (Of course, they also have music, handwork, German and Japanese lessons once or twice a week, as well as quite a lot of free play time & organised games time).