Reading Reading Every Day X Two

It's learn to read time around here for my girls. They've been working hard since school started and I can finally see their hard work paying off. Between home and school they have been practicing hard! I mentioned something to their teacher last week and she said it was like it all clicked after Christmas for many of the kids, really similar to what happens usually in first grade. The two of us are wondering if the difference this year is that this is an all day class versus a half day. One of the benefits of the longer day could be better readers coming out of kindergarten!! I love that.

Early reading skills are such an interesting thing to me. I love to read. It's one of my things. And one of my great joys as a parent has been teaching my children to read. There is something so tangible about reading that makes me excited to be a part of it. Sure, you can teach them to brush their teeth, not pick their nose (or not!), and play nice. But seeing them reading during the early stages of reading development is something that I absolutely love and feel really rewarded by. And helping my twins learn to read has been even more enjoyable and rewarding.

From day one we were told "don't compare them". That gets old and it gets hard to not compare them in some situations. It can be harmful to compare them and I try not to do it around them. But I've also found singly they are my best gauges for each other on development. They each have their strengths and weaknesses and reading has been no different.

Angelina's memory is incredible. When she doesn't know a word and you tell her then going forward she'll remember that word 90% of the time. She gives up easily when sounding out words and needs to build up her confidence. That is pretty typical Angelina and we are working that out. Her giving up rather than pushing on is something that she needs to learn in a lot of areas, not just reading. Her frustration gets the best of her. And I'm working on not letting it get the best of me!

Allison is much more timid but is good at reading. She will attempt to sound out most words and gets many of them right. Her memory is not as good as Ang's but to me I know she is advancing as a phonetic reader rather than sight reader. Her excitement is contagious too. Nothing better than seeing the smile on her face when she reads whole pages without needing help from me.

In the long term I know they will both be successful as readers. They each have shown the excitement for it. Especially when they read whole pages and sometimes even whole books to me. And while we sometimes work on reading as a trio, I've noticed that I have to separate them to really get good quality out of them. Without even trying they correct each other and give each other answers to words the other doesn't know without even letting whoever is reading attempt the words. While it's helpful in many areas that they have that concern for each other, it's not so helpful in terms of school work. Knowing there is someone there who will figure it out for you if you don't know it and you don't try is not always a good thing.

Overall.....teaching twins to read? It's double the fun and double the work!