Bits of his speech this evening

These are three clips of his speech that I particularly noted this evening. I'll write it down before I forget.

Bigger than
A few weeks ago, I was teaching the concept of "bigger than", "smaller than", "longer than" etc. Whilst he knows the meaning of "big", "small", "long", "short" etc and how to grade things from small, big, bigger, bigger, biggest etc, he was initially confused that there is a difference between "x is bigger than y" and "y is bigger than x".

After this evening's little conversation he had with himself, I know that he's understood the concept. He applied it in a humourous way that I never expected. Whilst walking up stairs with me, he said "I kentut (pass wind/fart). I kentut. Mama's kentut bigger than my kentut. Papa's kentut bigger than my kentut."

The phonic sound of double "oo"
Over the past month I've been introducing to him new phonic sounds, sounds which are beyond those represented by the individual 26 alphabets. It's unfortunately not a structured approach as I've not had time to make the relevant materials for the Montessori blue series (books, matching word and picture cards). So whenever I can, while reading aloud to him, I'll point out those words with double vowels like "oo" and "ee", and slowly trying to spot consonant blends like "sh" and "ch" but that's harder.

What I usually did was to cover the initial consonant and the final consonant of a word with double vowel. This would then expose only the double vowel "oo". I'll then say "twin letter o makes the sound ooo". I never got any feedback whether he understood or whether he even cared to listen.

This evening, he was willing to read two new homemade books (Pink series), after a few weeks of not picking up my homemade books at all. After he read them, he was observing the cover. On it was written "(his name)'s Book" and then followed by the title.

He used his fingers to cover the "B" and the "k" of the word "book" then said "two o's make the sound ooo". He repeated it a few times because I didnt understand what he was saying initially and his fingers didn't exactly cover those letters properly (fine motor problem). When I finally understood, and repeated back to him what I heard, he was very happy. So was I!

That's me!
As I mentioned above, it's been several weeks since he was reading the homemade books, so he's forgotten the "stories" in most of them. In his book titled "Who", on the very last page was a surprise where I wrote "It is (his name)."

When he came to that last page, he read it out and promptly said "That's me! That's me!" with a very big smile on his face. It was very funny to see his reaction! He wasn't the only one surprised cos I was surprised to hear him so naturally spurt out "that's me". I had never heard him say that phrase before. It's the little things like these that I treasure and that encourage me to keep on going.