We have always been using the doodle pad to play the game of reading alphabets with him. He loves it a lot and would pester us to write for him by bringing the doodle pad to us. He would say the letters in advance before we even started writing so he can see it written. Occasionally, we would write words for him to recognise too but he couldn’t except for the word, ‘Ball’. Recently, we bought this new Fisher-Price doodlepad so Hubby had been playing it with him and progressing to writing words for him instead and he started telling us what he knew which caught us in surprise sometimes. We would never knew he could read these words if we had not tested him.

1.   Ball
He learnt to read the word, ‘Ball’ quite early shortly after I introduced the Peter and Jane series of storybooks to him. We are still reading book 1a though we have 1b, 2a and 2b. He prefers that to the rest and I thought it’s still early to introduce 2a to him. He used to pronounce “Ball” correctly but recently, it is sounding more like “Bah!” He stubbornly likes to change the pronounciation his own way.

2. Car
Thereafter, I taught him ‘car’ during our thematic learning but he only remember it sometimes til recently, he started saying “car” always when he spot one while traveling. He would also say “car” in the storybook, ‘My World’ by Margaret Wise Brown. It’s his favourite book now after we bought it. ‘Goodnight moon’ is thrown aside for the moment and only watched on video. So I believed it was from this book, that he started remembering how the word looked like and is able to read on sight, “Car!”

3. School
I had been telling him that we are going to school and he finally said “school” as two syllables , “si…gu” right after me on the 28th of April. He kept practising and managed to say it properly sometimes.

Just two days later, he surprised me by walking past a Primary School Sign while we were heading to the bus-stop, pointed to the word ‘School’ on the sign and said the exact same thing, “si…gu”. I tested him again by asking him what was the word on two other banners further down and he was able to tell me, “School!” as one word. Wow. It amazed me because I had never taught him this word formally.

He learnt this because of the book which we kept reading to him to get him accustomed to school. The “Llama Llama Misses Mama” storybook. The word, ‘school’ appears in red at the last page where llama llama realised he misses school too! I keep emphasising this word to him everytime I read. So maybe that’s how he recognised it.

4. Dog
Hubby was playing with him using the doodlepad and casually wrote the word, “Dog” and asked Darius what it was. Darius said, “Doh…” This surprised us because we had been trying to teach him to say this word for ages in the Peter and Jane book 1a. He could never pronounce the Dd sound when he come across in storybooks we read nor during the reciting of the alphabet. So it made me jumped up when he finally uttered, “Doh…g” sounding like “Dog”. And he could even recognise the word and read it.

5. 大
Another thing which gave me a shock was, I casually decided to test him with the chinese word, “大” and he immediately said, “da!” and said it for a while when we keep asking him. I played one Chinese animation for him recently on some occasions and this is the very first word in the disc for him to learn. I did not expect that he would remember this and even recognised it. The animation was just fun to watch and he loves it so much.It was actually bought when he was only a few months old because I came across it and decided to get it in case I do not see it again. It was bought from Popular CDRama, titled, “韵语识汉字”- contains 2 discs.
In the vid we recorded, he suddenly pronounced it as “Ta!” instead with the T sound though he was saying it with the D sound before. Not quite right.

6. Water
He recently started saying “Water” after his Daddy pointed to the drain and showed him water flowing. After that, he walked past and started pointing and saying, “Water”. Initially, it was really pronounced quite accurately with the “ter” sound but now, he started saying, “Wo….ti”. His habit of making up his own sounds for words.
So we thought to test him and see if he could read this. It’s only found in ‘The Shape of Me and Other Stuff’ storybook and not taught to him.
He immediately read it with the “Wa” sound and “Tt” sound so it sounded a little like the correct pronounciation but still not right.
At least, it made us realised that his phonetic knowledge is helping him decipher words that he does not recognise.

7. Bus
The word ‘Bus’ is one such word which made use of his phonetic knowledge. He started saying “Bus” as “Bu…” initially. Day after day, we took the bus to and fro and kept telling him that “We are waiting for the bus”, “The bus is here!”. He finally started saying, “Bu..sss” with the “ssss” sound added. As the days went by, he could now pronounced it accurately and would always announced to us when he sees the bus coming.
We never taught him the word ‘Bus’ and it’s not a regular word in storybooks. So we were pleasantly surprised on showing him the word on the doodlepad, he read it as “buuh…ssss” sounding like the actual sound of Bus!  This was due to him reading the phonetic sounds of B and S.  The way he reads B is not “Bee” but always “Buh”. He also reads U as “Uh” instead of “You”. We then corrected him a little and told him that it was actually “Bus”. From then on, he could read it everytime with the correct pronounciation.

Video of How He Read:

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