Sight Words and Environmental Reading

O.k. so I don't know about you but it's been awhile since I've been to kindergarten, or even known a kid that's going well enough to know exactly what they are doing now. Let me just tell you, it's not cutting, coloring and gluing anymore! We're talking about reading and we're only into the 4th or 5th week of school. It never occured to me that kids can actually learn to read without having to sound words out. It's called "Environmental Reading" and this is what it is.....think about what you see when you're driving through the city. You see all kinds of signs and emblems and you automatically know the place you're driving by. For instance, you don't need to see the words "McDonald's or Taco Bell" to know it's a restaurant. If you see the sign, you know where you are. Well, I'm learning that Gabby has already learned to read without me even really teaching her. Now, 70% of this is her knowing the symbols but there are some things that have no symbols and she knows it just by the writing.

So in her class, her teacher has this thing called the "I can read" bag. Each night, a different student is to bring it home and cut and paste words out of a magazine, off cereal boxes, you get the point...onto a piece of paper and then stick it in a plastic sleeve in a binder and take it back to school. So today was our day. She was so excited to get this bag and we had to run some errands after school so she was reading to me what some of the other kids had put in the binder so far. As she rattled off word, after word, I knew she recognized them but mostly because of the symbol. Suddenly, I heard her say (as she was running down the list) "Mary Kay." Now, I know that Mary Kay doesn't have a particular symbol in it's ads. It may have a compact but it wouldn't have been big enough to fit on this sheet of paper so it was just the words. I couldn't believe she knew it. When we got home, we sat down immediately to get this assignment completed so it was off the "to do" list for the night. Here is a list of things that she knew....

Pepsi
Wii
Macaroni and Cheese (Kraft, what kid doesn't know this one!)
Zyrtec
Wal-Mart (just words)
Capri Sun
Mary Kay
Verizon (What!? You know Verizon?)
iCarly (Fav. t.v. show)
Burger King
Hannah Montana
Wendy's
The word "go."

She also knows McDonald's and Sonic but we didn't find those words in a magazine today. And I'm sure there are words that we are missing but WOW I was pretty impressed with my little 5 year old. In the classroom, they are also working on sight words like, "I", "the", "and", you get the point so every two weeks, she brings home a literacy folder with books they have made and a list of their sight words for us to continue reviewing as they add more and more new words to their list.

So in case you were wondering what goes on in kindergarten....there's a whole lotta reading going on!