Reading shapes and animal names

Zack has been reading to himself from a book called Color Zoo, which uses various brightly colored shapes, mostly polygons, to construct somewhat Cubist animals. He sounds out the letters and then proclaims, “Diamond,” or, “Deer.” The familiarity of the shapes and biomorphs assists him, of course, but he really does seem to be focusing on the letters and their sounds.

 

This morning, he read from one page with three shapes, first sounding out “Square” with minimal help (I said only that it had a silent final ‘e’). Then “Triangle,” which he’d figured out the other day. And finally “Circle.” He commented that ‘c’ sometimes sounds like “sss.” Yes, I said, that’s a good word to practice because it has a ‘c’ that sounds like sss and also one that sounds like k. And it also has a silent final ‘e’, just like the other words on the page.

 

“There’s only one ‘e’,” he gently corrected me, pointing back to Square. “You said it was the ‘last e’.”

 

Touche.