He was finishing his worksheet on the letter 'W' and I was across the room working on his responsibility chart, when he got to the bottom, where it asks him to write out an entire sentence. He had completed this, and he and I usually work on sounding out the sentence.
I said, "Go ahead and start trying to sound it out, I'll be there in just a second." So, he started trying to sound out the letters.
He said, "Wa-Ea-Sss" "Wes" That was the first word in the sentence, a boy's name, "Wes."
"Yes! That's right" I said, "Wes. You read that just now! All by yourself!"
"Wes?" He asked looking skeptical.
"Wes. It's his name." I explained
"Wes is a strange name," he said.
"I knew a guy named Wes. Go on," I said. At this point I was done with what I had been working on but I knew better than to hurry over to him.
"Wes Sss-A-Wa No...Wes Sss-Aa-W. Wes Saw Wes Saw!" He looked up and grinned at me. I was standing next to him at this point. I had helped him in sounding out the hard A in saw over to a soft a sound.
"What did Wes See?" I asked him. He looked back at the paper.
"Wes Saw 'a' " he paused and glanced at me to see if that was really all you had to say with that letter.
"That's right..." I prompted
"Wes saw a Wa-E..." He tried a hard E sound a few times, then figured it out... "Wa-E-B"
"Wes Saw A Web!" He looked astonished as he realized he had really said something, and began repeating it, "Wes saw a web!" I pointed to the drawing of a spider in it's web. "Wes saw a web!"
"You really read that whole sentence all by yourself!" I exclaimed I grabbed him in a big hug and he was beside himself. It was sooo cute. He just knew what he'd done and it was great! He gave me five and then took the paper off to show his Dad in the other room.
When he got in there, he hands the worksheet to Sam and just stands there. Sam of course looks at it and reads the well written sentence across the bottom, and says very good, but from the look on my face knew something must be up. Thomas yells, "I read that whole sentence by myself! It says, "Wes Saw a Web!"
One interesting thing is that just like he tries to invert the lower case d and b he also is saying some of the words kind of inside out. When he's told the story a few times, he has said, "Sin saw a web." And I'll correct him and say, "Wes" there are other words he does it with too, but not as often. I think part of it, is that that it is such an odd name to him.
Anyway, we called Gannie and he told her his news. He pointed out that he was holding his Spider-Man toy when it happened (it's the horrible red monster one, not Venom, the other one...) and he told Gannie, "My Spider-Man toy must have some Magic in him!" She told him, "No Thomas, it's you. You have the Magic in you." He liked that.
Then we drove over to my Mom's driveway, and she came out to the car. As soon as she opened the door, he tells her, "I read a whole sentence today." She said, "You wrote a whole sentence today?" and he smiled real big and said, "No! I READ a whole sentence today!" She said, "Oh My Gosh!"
Now he's pretty shy about the whole thing! He's afraid someone will ask him to read something else I think!
MJ
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