Mommy report: Sight word success!!

We’re fans of Preschool Prep Company, thanks to Shelley turning me on to it last year.  Braska knew her letters and numbers and several shapes before we started the PPC Meet the Letters, Numbers, etc, videos last year, but within a few weeks, both Kinlee (at about 18 months) and Braska firmed up their letters—upper and lower case—as well as numbers 1-10, colors, and shapes. 

So for Christmas a strong hint was placed to a certain willing Grandma about the next step in our learning plan.  The Meet the Sight Words Set of DVDs.  And the girls LOVE it!  They’re just on the first one at this point, and they’ve only been watching them about 2 weeks, and not that regularly, to be quite honest.  Mostly in the car on longer-than-10-minute trips.

Last night I found the flash cards that we also go at Christmas, and I decided to put them out in sight so I’d remember to work with them on them more frequently.  I thought this would be the beginning of them learning… instead they showed me up big time.

Here’s video of the second time through (always less enthusiastic than the first round).  I was still about to burst when M walked in from work a few minutes later…

I am so impressed with the girls. It’s not been long at all that we’ve even begun to expose them to this, and they both are picking it up quickly.  So now I’m motivated to kick it up and be more consistent so they can build their sight word vocab more and more.  They get so excited when they see a word they know on TV or in a book.  We spent extra time before bed reading books and they were pointing out “the!” and “you!” everywhere they saw a word they knew.  Fun!

An interesting side note (to some of you)… Braska is more consistent with a quick answer than KiKi is, but she doesn’t speak up as much when Kinlee is right there.  She seems to show her skills much more when she’s not being dominated by the energy explosion that is KiKi.  Just something interesting to me as we think about school and inclusion and friends and such…  Braska doesn’t use her language nearly as much when the girls are together because Kinlee does more than enough for both of them and generally answers questions and informs Braska of what their next steps or plans are.  Kinlee acts as the big sister/leader/boss and seems pretty natural at it. And Braska being the very content follower that she is accepts it happily.  But we’re working on giving them time in different contexts apart so that Braska can be the one to make choices, express her wants, and keep up her excellent communication progress.  Her language is continuing to amaze and impress us and her team, but she’s rarely showing it in group settings when more exuberant or active kids are involved.  Sometimes she will come tell me, “Mommy, she’s loud.”  And she’s right.  But that’s about as much complaining as you’ll get from her.  Little sweet princess.