Sophie can read

We've suspected this for quite a while, but it's pretty much official.

A couple of weeks ago her teacher was telling me how they were doing some activity with word cards and she would ask Sophie for one, and she would hand it to the teacher (there are no pictures on them).  This was the week after we had noticed her making A's and H's out of her baby carrots at lunch time.  Last weekend when we were driving around, she was reading signs that she saw.  She does the same thing with posters in the library, she read "help" to me Saturday.  Then on Monday her teacher said she did some kind of reading test with her and it showed she was reading at a first grade level.

The thing is, it's hard to test because her speech is limited.  But we were picking up some flashcards tonight and I ran through all of them with her, picture side facing me.  She seemed to be pronouncing them correctly, to the best of her abilities, and I'd ask her for the sign language if I knew she knew it, or what color the item is just to double check.

Also, we have an ipad app that is for speech (it's called proloquo2go and is an augmentative alternative communication device, like what a stroke victim might use).  It allows you to add new buttons and has a keyboard view.  She has been able to spell her name on there for a long time. The other day I quizzed her and she spelled a lot of simple things, like boy, cat, dog, mama, dada.

Anyway, like I said, this doesn't surprise us as we've always known she was a smart little girl.  And she has always loved books.  She has known her alphabet since she was 2, maybe earlier.  We just wish her speech was coming along more quickly, but at least she is developing more understanding, even if she can't say it.  And this might actually help her communicate with us more via typing, who knows.

One slightly worrying thing is that next week we are moving her to a new school.  It is a church dayschool here in Euless that has classes from 2yo up to kindergarten.  I'll go into the why's more later, but when we were doing the tour this summer, the director was showing us the 3yo classroom.  They have the alphabet up along a wall of the room, and each letter has the corresponding animal (alligator, bear, cat, etc). The director was all excited about this program they have where they learn an animal hand motion for each one that helps them learn their letters and told us that by the end of the year, the child learns the whole alphabet.  We didn't say anything, but Stephanie and I were thinking "okay, what if she already knows that?"   Well, the main reason we're putting her there is for social stuff, not the curriculum, but we hope she's not bored by it.