Arin's Reading!

I am so excited that after much practice, Arin has finally figured out how to sound out and blend together a word!  She has memorized several words to repeat at sight and she knows the letter sounds, it was just bringing them together that she wasn't grasping until now!  We were playing memory with her -at word hearts (which she loves!) last night.  We've been practicing her -at words so much that she has them all down and gets excited when she can read them in books.  So last night, as we were playing memory, I decided it was time to add more words to the game.  This time I added the -ad word family.  As she turns over a tile, she is to read the word out loud.  Since these were new words, she sounded them out letter by letter.  So she would sound out "h-a-d" or "s-a-d" and prior to last night, that is as far as she could take it and then I would help her bring them together to "had" or "sad" or whatever the word at the time would be and then she'd seem to memorize it.  Last night, she sounded out "b-a-d" and then looked at me and said "bad".  I was shocked that she brought it together on her own and she was thrilled that she could do it.  So she practiced on some other, never seen before, -ad words and she could do it with them as well!  Then we played memory, using both the -at and -ad words and she really had to pay attention to the words she was turning over because words like sad and sat do not match, but look similiar if you are just glancing at them.  She kept saying, "Mommy, I can't believe I can read now!"