The Happiest Girl Alive

The text message read, "Zoey just read her first book...all by herself!"

What?

How does that happen? We were just saying to each other how we had to do more work at home. Since school is largely a play-based learning deal Zo hasn't spent a lot of time sitting down and learning how to read...or so we thought. I read to her constantly, and she does flip through the odd book, but we might only actually work on reading once a week, at best. For the longest time we were waiting for some revelation from school...isn't that where kids learn to do this stuff? Nope...not in JK, not anymore. They play. So when she just sat down and started reading...sounding things out and working her way slowly through page after page...we were astonished. She's always been rock solid with her alphabet, and she understands sounds and has always worked her way through words. She's become more patient and she really uses the pictures to get clues as to what words should be. She memorizes a lot of them I suspect, but that's how it starts, I guess. Now she's the happiest girl alive. You can't wipe the smile off of her face. "Daddy, I'm going to get book tickets at school tomorrow. I'm going to the reading station 'cause no one is ever at the reading station." No doubt...all that playing getting in the way of actual reading.