The other morning Jason carried Drew downstairs, plopped him on the sofa next to me, handed him a book, and said, "read it to Mommy!". Drew "read" a page of his book to me; I smiled and said, "good job!" then Jason said, "keep going!". Drew proceeded to "read" the entire book to me. It's not the first time he's memorized phrases/pages of books, but I was shocked that he had the WHOLE thing memorized! I looked at Jason and asked if he'd been working on that with Drew and he said, "no! I walked into his room and heard him reading it! I turned the page and he kept going!".
As always happens, he doesn't do nearly as good of a job once he knows the cameras are rolling, but I caught the gist of it anyway. It's not a complicated or lengthy book, and he's obviously working from memory/pictures (and the rhyming helps too), but even so, that boy's memory is going to get him places! And, if I remember correctly (funny how I have a horrible memory, but Drew seems to have an amazing one), I believe memorization is one of the first steps in learning to read.
It just so happens that in the process of uploading the above video I came across this video from almost exactly a year ago! (This video was taken on 2/28/2012 and the above video was taken on 2/27/2013!)
I can't believe how much he's changed in a year!! With the amount he talks it feels like he's been talking in sentences for years already (and he's only 2 years old!)! Boy... we gotta slow down!
Seriously, I'm just remembering... Did I tell you Drew can spell, too? He was typing on my laptop and I was calling out letters while he typed them. I've taught him to "spell" Mommy, Daddy, and Drew, so I was calling out the letters then having him tell me what word he spelled. Then I asked him to spell James. I sounded out the "j" sound and Drew hesitated for a moment then hit the J, then I made the "a" sound (that one's easy of course) and he hit A, then I said "mmmm" and Drew again hesitated then typed M! I spelled out E and S for him, but I couldn't believe he got that far! Of course, since then he's been saying "Buh... buh.... James!". It doesn't quite work that way....
