Sound It Out!

Home education always has its thrills and challenges. Thankfully, those two seem to balance each other or there would be days I'd question my sanity. Recently, our Kindergarten-aged child has been listening to his older siblings reading and Mom going over the daunting rules of phonics. He quite masterfully picked these up by following along.

     So armed with his newly acquired phonics skills, our son marches over to his chore cards. He picks them up and studies them for a time very diligently. He excitedly runs over to me and successfully read them off! I gave him sufficient praise and was truly very proud of him. He decided Mom was worthy enough to be let in on some important information.

     "Mom, do you want to know my secret for reading those words?" he solemnly asked. 

     "Why, yes! Please tell me your secret."

      He gave a quick glance around the room. Since his sister and the family dog were in the same room, he deemed it necessary to whisper to me his secret. Apparently, those two had not received security clearance. He leans into me and whispers, "I sounded the words out."

     It took all I had to not laugh but to treat the conversation with as much reverence as he was. I told him I thought that was a great way to read words. He seemed dismayed. Again, he leaned over to me and whispered, "you said it out loud", and pointedly looked over at his sister and the dog. I assured him his sister was not paying attention to his "secret" and the dog really did not understand anyway.

     I sat in the recliner and was just thoroughly amused. It reminded me of another phonetic triumph I had heard about in years past. In high school, the mother of a friend of mine was a first grade teacher. She shared with me how one time, she had been thoroughly instructing her first graders to sound words out. They left for recess and bathroom break. One little pupil returned to ask his teacher loudly on how to spell a certain word he had read in the bathroom that began with a "f" and then he proceeded to call out the other three letters. My friend's mother was about to jump in and intervene with a little girl yelled out to him, "sound it out!"

     Learning our language does have challenges. Thankfully, we have the secret key: sound it out!