Her English Reading Progress

Little Bee has shown a tremendous interest in reading this year, especially since she is now a budding reader and appreciates interesting stories. Being such a girly little child, she particularly enjoys stories of fantasy, princesses, love and family. She is also starting to write little short phrases on her own here and there, and I had started her on journal writing since March (albeit rather infrequently!), which she is increasingly enjoying now. 

She was struggling with phonics in the beginning of the year, when she just turned 4, so I stopped teaching her phonics, and used the whole-word approach with her instead. Being such a visual learner, the whole-word approach appealed a lot to her, which is why she is also fairly proficient in recognising Chinese characters. 

Surprisingly, she loves the Peter and Jane stories, and is now into book 5b of the series, which she can read independently with very minimal help from me. 

These days, we only read Peter and Jane once a week, which is why the recent progress had been slower, because I want to expose her to other stories and also Chinese books. But it is heartening to see her opening up the Peter and Jane books eagerly, despite their 70s retro illustrations! I guess it helps that she "grew up" with Peter and Jane, right from series 1, so sometimes it is rather amusing to hear her discussing about them to me, as if they are her old friends! 

Her school teaches phonics in interesting and fun ways, and uses the Oxford Reading Tree (ORT) series, which is superb in building reading skills in little kids through progressive accumulation of vocabulary and same characters (like Peter and Jane) who grow up with the little readers. I guess for reading, it helps if we have some continuity of characterisation and plots for the children. She is now in Stage 3 of ORT, which is mainly for kids from 5 to 6 years old.

I hope she will be an avid reader just like hubby, Big Bee and me!