Vincente's First Word

I don't mean his first SPOKEN word - he's been speaking words for a long time (about 12/13 months) ... I mean his first READ word. 

For the past few months, Vincente has been ejoying learning his letters and "reading." He can recognize A, B, C, D, and I, in any order, anywhere you write them. Ever since I taught him those few letters, he started "reading" anything that looked like words. He would "read" receipts, hymnbooks, my planner, any books he could find, and so on. His "reading" consists mainly of saying letters, and then graduated into saying all sorts of sounds and two syllable "words." 

I thought I should take advantage of his interest in reading and read more books to him. So I dug out all the "Bright and Early Books for BEGINNING beginners" - a bunch of Dr. Suess books, and some others. The first one I pulled out was Great Day for Up. The reason I picked this book first is because the word "UP" is almost always written in bigger, brighter colored print, so I thought "Hey, maybe he'll learn the word 'Up'"

Well, we sat down to read. Vincente, with his attention span typical for his age, sat through maybe three pages, and then kept turning the pages by himself saying "Up! Up!" on each page. I thought "Great... now he'll never learn how to read... he can't even let me finish one VERY short book."

So I gave up, let him have the book, and moved on to my own homework. 

Well, this was last week sometime, now fast forward to last night at my birthday dinner. Christy took me out, and we were sitting there drawing on the kids' menu with Vincente. He wanted me to draw his letters, then cars, busses, trains, trucks, etc. After a little while of drawing pictures, Vincente randomly (I thought!) said "Up!" Christy and I chuckled, and I told her how I had read him Great Day for Up recently, and he just likes saying the word "Up!"

We continued talking and drawing and eating our salads, when I looked down and read what Vincente's menu said. At the top of the page were the words "What I want to be when I GROW UP" (the words "grow up" were in bigger print). I said to Christy, "Look! It says 'Up' on this page! Vincente read 'Up'!" We started getting hysterical - my 18 month old child recognized the word "Up"!!! Anyway, so we called my mom to tell her the great news - her first grandson is starting to read at the tender age of 18  months! 

It's not like I have been trying to teach him how to read anyway - I was going to wait until I finished school to even teach him his letters, really. But hey, if they want to learn, there's nothing wrong with helping them out. So Vincente and I are going to read more often, and I'm going to buy him alphabet blocks so he can start learning all of his letters :)