Big Reading Love

Last night, before dinner and after a nap, we told EJ she could watch one of her favorite shows on TV. As we were scrolling around the DVR menu, trying to get to her show, Super Why, among the long list of recordings we have yet to watch, I paused for a moment on another listing. It was so brief---maybe 3 seconds---but it was noticed. We've known that she was memorizing words and sounding even more out for awhile now, but we weren't prepared for this:

EJ: "I don't want to watch Big Love. I want to watch Super Why, Mom."

My first thought was, "Okay, I don't want you watching an HBO show about a polygamist family, either, but did you just read 'Big Love' without any prompting/sounding out/hesitation?"

Wowser.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised---she has been playing a made-up game with Mike that they coined "treasure hunt" for awhile now, which involves Mike writing a series of clues on paper, taping them to items around the house, and EJ reading each clue to get to the next, until she gets a little prize of a small piece of candy or something similar. She has read clues like, "In the fridge on the homemade yogurt," for instance, even asking if the "e" in home was a silent one, then declaring, "that makes the 'o' say the 'oh' sound!" We also play a game where we write names of items on post-it notes, then she reads the post-its and places them in the right spots. Last week, with a little help sounding things out, she put post-its on "laundry basket" and "play kitchen," among others. All of that is a clue that reading the television listings wasn't far behind, but even still, there was something about her quick reading of those two words, "big" and "love," that was startling to Mike and me. It showed how much attention she is paying to everything (yikes!), and also that there are words that she absolutely knows, without any time necessary to process them. Our jaws just hit the floor.

This morning, she is home from school with a cold. She is still high energy---she is sick enough to stay home but not sick enough to really rest---so I'm indulging her with a little more television than is usual. As we scrolled through the listings this morning to pick something out, I thought it might be fun to see which titles she recognized on sight. From the guide, she read Curious George, Sid the Science Kid, Super Why, and Mickey Mouse. Add this to the number of signs she reads and/or recognizes when we are out and about, (i.e., "Momma, that sign says food!" or "This is the exit---E-X-I-T, exit."), and the amount of story book text she sounds out when we read together, and I think we can safely say,

Our kid is reading.