He recognizes all his letters and has all the sounds down pat, so we've been doing a few activities to "stretch" the book. First off, I got out my palm tree cookie sheet and let him add letters as we would get to them in the book. Of course it was always a highlight to make all the letters fall off at the right moment.
Another day we enjoyed playing Chicka Chicka Bingo. I would make the sound of a letter and he would have to see if he had it on his card. He did great and I think he is probably close to reading 3 letter words.
I don't feel the need to start formally teaching him though, so I'll probably just wait and see what he comes up with on his own over the next 6 months or so. Both Ben and Will picked up reading on their own to begin with and I let them do their own thing until about 1st grade. At that point we covered phonics in Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons.
We only went to about lesson 20, I suppose because they already had a fair start at it. Thus far I have felt very lucky in that I have had very little work to do in teaching reading. These boys have made it very easy on me!
One other activity Charlie has been really into this week is watching The Letter Factory Video from Leap Frog.
I first read about this at the Mount Hope Chronicles blog. I'm not usually one to go for video "teaching", but since Mt. Hope's approach to reading was well-matched to what I do, I thought I'd try it out on her recommendation. I'm glad I did! It is a clever and memorable way for little ones to learn and reinforce letter sounds. I give it my stamp of approval and so does Charlie. He walks around quizzing his brothers on what sound each letter makes, praising them when they get it right and correcting when they fake a wrong answer. Be warned though, you will get the little letter jingle caught in your head and mindlessly sing it a little too loud while grocery shopping without the kids. Please don't ask me how I know this. Just heed my warning.
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