Ozzy reading

the other day, ozzy read this little easy reader all by himself.  the last page was a bit tricky because the picture had so much going on, he was confused about what it was, but i showed him how to use the first letter of the word, so you see him applying what he learned, sounding out the first letter and remembering that the word was 'farm'. 

learning several sight words early on (at 17 months) was helpful in moving him forward, but i find that it's a little more challenging teaching him to look at the individual letters of new words since he learned the sight words as whole words.  when mimi first began reading, we didnt do any sight word memorizing, she preferred baby's first words type books and started by reading labels and captions to pictures and relied heavily on letter/sound relationship to figure out words and now she can pretty much read any word she encounters, but needs support with comprehension since she focuses more on phonemes than on meaning and sentence structure.

and recently i found out from a routine eye exam that mimi has "convergence insufficiency," a condition where both eyes dont always focus at the same point all the time.  so when she reads, her eyes jump around, or rather one eye doesnt focus on the same place as the other, and she loses her place or she ends up skipping words, lines, and sometimes whole paragraphs or an entire page.  without her full attention on meaning and syntax, she is not even aware that she skipped anything!  so along with eye exercises with focus beads, we have to really work on amping up her comprehension skills, so she is aware of moments when meaning breaks down when she 'jumps' lines in her reading. 

as for ozzy, i'm amazed at how much his language abilities have grown.  he picks things up fairly quickly and he seems to understand concepts pretty easily.  the tricky part is his very very short attention span.  but he's not even 2 and a half yet, so that is as it should be.