5 And 8

Ruth completed her reading chart today!!! That's five books in ten days! It's amazing to see what a confident reader she has become in such a short time. We are so proud of her and she is definitely proud of herself! As a reward, we took her out for ice cream at Amy's this evening and then to the book store for a new book. Her new chart is already hung and ready to go. This time she has to read six books before she gets her special reward, which she told us she wants to be a trip to the bowling alley. And while I'm shamelessly bragging on my child--(it is my blog afterall, and that's kind fo what it's for!)--let me just say how impressed I was yesterday when she was counting how many lines she had to read on a particular page. She was adding them up by sentences. There were two sentences, each with four lines. So, Ruth counted up the lines in the first sentence and said "Four." Then she added up the lines in the other sentence and again came up with four. Then she announced--without using her fingers or any other adding device--"Well, it looks like I have eight lines to read." I hadn't seen her add in her head before so I was quite surprised and thrilled. Then, tonight at dinner she went on to tell us the sums for all the same number problems (1+1, 2+2, etc.) up to 5+5. She did them all in her head and got them all right. It's truly a wonderful thing to watch your child blossom in this way.