This month Ingrid learned to read. She’s known all the letters for, like, years; been able to read single words for at least six months, and been able to write something that I can more or less read for even longer. Now it’s all come together and she can read: not just single words but proper reading, fast enough that she can read entire sentences and stories.
Sometimes she gets stuck but unless she’s tired or in a hurry, she will reread the word until it makes sense. And she’s pretty attentive and notices when she’s made a mistake. She can read “smörgåsar” where it says “smörgåspaket”, catch that, and try again. My hypothesis is that with long words like that, she looks at the first half of the word, skips to a conclusion, and then reads the last few letters to confirm.
Her first book was En liten stund by Anna-Clara Tidholm. It’s really a book for toddlers: a simple story, about 30 pages, with a picture and a couple of sentences on each page. (It’s about two rabbits who eat pancakes. Lots of pancakes, with lots of raspberry jam and cream.)
This is about the right level for her, so Eric and Ingrid have been borrowing toddler books from the library, and I have brought out her own old books: Bu och Bä, Liten skär, etc. There is also the Extra lätt att läsa (“Extra easy reading”) series, which is at about the same level but the topic matter is geared towards 6- to 8-year-olds rather than 3-year-olds. (Simskolan was particularly topical.) But she quite likes the toddler books, too.
Reading other people’s writing has brought up the matter of Swedish spelling. Which is much easier than English spelling, thank goodness, but not as regular as Estonian. She’s learned how to read the sj in sjuk and sk in skiner, and that the g in morgon and the r in bord are not heard. Currently she is struggling with the fact that de (“they”) should be pronounced dom while det (“it”) should be pronounced de – sentences tend to lose their sense when you read “it” instead of “they”. I do wonder why they didn’t use the modernised dom spelling in books that are aimed at beginning readers.
As with everything else, reading is, of course, a social activity for her. She may have read on her own on a few occasions, but she’d much rather read for me or for Eric. (And show us the pictures, just as she wants to see the pictures when I read for her.) Today she had a friend over after preschool, and read Bu och Bä i skogen for her.
Now that she has figured out the art of reading, she reads everything. She reads the text on cereal boxes and on juice bottles, on street signs and on notes from my desk. Annoyingly many texts on everyday goods are in English: slogans and brand names on cereal boxes are a good bad example. (“Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Multigrain”.) We’ve also discussed why some packaging has the same text in Norwegian and Danish in addition to Swedish.
Often when I’m reading for her, I hear her mumbling under her breath some words from the page I’m reading. In particular she often reads the last word from each page.
Other than reading… nothing much, I think. I haven’t spent as much time with her as I used to when I was at home, so now I simply don’t see enough of her to notice minor changes.
She usually spends most of the night in her own bed but often wanders over to her mattress next to our bed some time around 5 or 6 in the morning. Sometimes earlier, sometimes not at all.
In the morning, in bed before we get up, she likes cuddling with me or playing with Adrian.
During breakfast she likes to pour apple juice on her cereal instead of milk. Other breakfast favourites include tunnbrödsrulle with liver pâté and perhaps apple slices, or scrambled eggs.
It is very important to her to give me a proper good-bye when I leave for work: put on her shoes, follow me out onto the porch or down the stairs, then three hugs and three kisses, and wave from the porch until I go out of sight behind the neighbours’ hedge. The ceremony slowly gets longer and longer: first it was just three kisses in the kitchen; one day earlier this week she forgot what she was doing and followed me all the way to the corner, at which point we both laughed at her mistake and she ran back, and now she’s wanted to do it that way every morning.
When I see her again in the afternoon she is usually either watching a movie or playing with a friend. When movie time is up we usually read a bit, or play with Adrian (either all three of us together, or just her and Adrian) while Eric makes dinner. After dinner and after I have put Adrian to bed, we may read some more, or maybe draw.
Most days she will have brought home a drawing or painting for me from preschool. The subject matter is generally girls, princesses, castles, flowers and hearts.
She often uses varför (“why”) in the sense of “how unfair, do I really have to, why must I do this”.
She likes wearing dresses and tights or leggings, and rarely picks any other clothes. I think that the waists on skirts and trousers make her itch.
Hey! That is great! Does she also read in Estonian?
Cheers,
Triin
A little bit, but not much. Not more than single sentences. Mainly because we don’t have any suitable books – the average Swedish children’s book is miles better than the average Estonian one. (All too often, Estonian books try to be educational, and as a result they’re generally not as much fun.) But also because Ingrid naturally pronounces all letters the Swedish way, so Estonian words are harder. When pronounced in Swedish, they don’t sound like anything recognizable.