It is fully confirmed. Sophie can sound out words. Three letter words are very easy for her but she can do four letter, five letter and longer words too.
Jonah is an excellent communicator; he talks non-stop. The only problem is that we aren't always the best listeners. Tonight, while putting Jonah to bed, he kept asking for something. I wasn't sure what he wanted. Carrie has spoiled him at bed time such that he will often not sit through a bed-time story until he has all of his animals and blankets in his arms; this makes reading a story somewhat awkward. I assumed this is what he wanted.
"unintelligible something" "You want your dog?" (I didn't think it was right. That is usually doggie) "No. Unintelligible something" "You want your blanket?" "No. This. Want _THIS_!!!" He gives me the JSL (Jonah Sign Language) symbol for water. "You want water?" "Yes. I've been telling you that for 10 minutes now, for crying out loud!"
Okay, I made that last part up but I was pretty impressed with his problem solving skills. By the way, the difference between the ASL and JSL symbols for water is that in JSL it just uses the pointer finger as opposed to making a W with three fingers.
On an unrelated note Sophie and I were playing hide and seek today. Jonah was helping. When it was my turn to hide it was practically impossible to stay hidden as Jonah would run over to me and scream or try to pull me out of hiding. The only time that I could hide was when I managed to trick him into looking the other way while I ran; then they both had a good time looking for me. On Sophie's turn, Jonah was our seeker. He would walk around the house pondering where she could be. I mean it. He was pondering. He would put his finger to his chin and say, "Hmmmmmmm." He would also check all the previous spots she had hidden one by one. After he determined she wasn't in a spot he would stop, put his finger back on his chin and "hmmm" again.
Sophie has been watching educational television for the last year where they cover phonics. I've been pretty convinced that she could read if she tried. Today she was playing a word search game on my phone and kept asking me what the words said. After a few words I suggested she sound them out. The first word had a non-standard pronunciation but her second word was "cold". She spelled it out and then sounded it out perfectly. I was pretty impressed. She's "read" dog and cat before but I think that is just pattern recognition. Sure, most reading is just pattern recognition but that is after you know how to read. At this stage she needs to sound words out. She'll get to sight words later.
Jonah has decided his job around the house is the toilet inspector. Any time he walks past a bathroom, he'll go in, lift up the lid and determine if the toilet has been properly flushed. If it hasn't, he flushes the toilet and walks out. He is definitely following some criteria as he does not always flush the toilet.
