Hyrum The Reader

Hyrum has been in Kindergarten for two and a half months and it seems like he comes home a more mature and smart little boy every day.  I can't believe the rate of his progression nowadays.

Before attending his Parent/Teacher conference I was a little bit apprehensive.  I didn't know how I was going to react to a semi-stranger critiquing my precious child.  I have a difficult time with standardized tests that are supposed to sum up a child's intelligence.  I also know that Hyrum isn't perfect when it comes to paying attention and following directions (unless it has to do with dinosaurs, dragons, or Lego's).  I was amazed to find out she only had shinning compliments for his behavior and class work.  He is truly excelling and I'm so proud of him.

He must get his "brain genes" from his dad because I was never quite so successful in school.  I always wanted to be in the smart kids' groups, but no matter how hard I tried I could only scrape average scores.  This resulted in a life-long struggle with low confidence.  I had the attitude of, "why should I even try if I'll never be good enough?" (No one's fault but my own.)  Don't get me wrong- I perfectly understand the need to separate those children who need more of a challenge, it's so important to give them tools to excel in life.  Now that I look back I realize how silly I was.  I wish I hadn't let letters or numbers on a paper influence my self worth.  Now I believe every person has their own version of intelligence and the term "stupid" is just a myth.  I've also realized that getting good grades has more to do with confidence than actual brain power. 

("Mom I love you, Hyrum.  Mom I want to learn from you.")

Hyrum's most exciting news right now is he's reading!  Before embarking on my "teach Hyrum to read adventure",  I never realized how complicated and crazy our language is!  All you have to do is teach them the alphabet and coinciding sound and they can read, right?  WRONG!!!  There's all these complex rules for those little brains to digest and then there's hundreds of words that just throw those rules out the window.  How in the world am I supposed to explain words like: "thought", "again", "their", "language", "English", and even the word "word"?  There's been so many moments when I've wondered how in the world any of us learn to read. It's been a difficult process, but all of a sudden, just in the last few days, reading has changed from a frustrating chore to super fun and easy!   Hyrum constantly has a book in his hand reading through them like an old pro.  He's starting to discover the magic of reading that I've been trying to convince him of all along.  I'm so excited for him, it's such a huge step to be conquering so quickly.  What a champ!

(We had lots of help from starfall.com, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and way too much time in front of the TV with PBS kids on.)

This little note from Hyrum's teacher is semi-off-topic, but I had to share it: