Wow, Robert, thank you so much for sharing that update!. David is doing so phenomenally well! It most certainly was the work ethic you developed with him that gave him the tenacity to take on the extra Google challenge. And look where he is now, awesome!
At 21 years old he has achieved Academic and career goals that mamy have only dreamed of, and that others may achieve but will take as long as another decade to get to. So cool.
Plus, he got a free ride for his master's, wow. Well, not free, he was a ta, but still, no debt there!
The article you shared on phonics was interesting, the author even went so far as to say that if you teach sight words, it is detrimental because then phonics is not automatic. I used both sight word and phonics programs with my now 20month old. He can read pretty well, he just doesn't have much stamina. Of course, I have no idea which parts of the teaching program were the most effective...
I will say though, it's impossible not to teach sight words at some level... The child always sees the whole word (like it or not), so they are bound to memorize the whole word for common words even if you use pure phonics. So in that sense I'd say the author is incorrect, some whole word teaching won't hurt.
So now proud mama moment, here is video of the little guy. Not the greatest one (he's hard to catch on camera), but super hat with his progress!
http://youtu.be/Bbh3Og3XMocI have some other videos where he is identifying numerals, he can also count to twenty. Can wait to get the math ball really rolling!
Thanks for the update Robert, very inspirational!
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