Nightly Reading - For Her!

Leilani has had a nightly tradition since she could sit still.  One of her parents reads books to her in bed.  For a few years I've tried to sneak Spanish books in, with varying degrees of success.  I used to be a little concerned that Leili would learn a terrible accent from me, but fortunately this hasn't happened.

I've written before that Leli would sometimes request to read Coquito, which I would begrudgingly read sections of.  Why begrudgingly?  Well if you look to your right you'll see that Coquito is not a story book, but a text book for young readers.  So instead of reading "El Hombre Increible," the Incredible Hulk, I would be reading "Apple."  Hardly exciting for daddy, but for some reason Leili always enjoyed it.

A few weeks ago Crystina made a change.  Leilani has been going to bed earlier and that gave her mother some time to sit down and do Coquito with her, but instead of reading aloud Leilani is the one doing the reading!  She's been learning to read English at her Montessori school for a little while now and the Spanish is going even better.

Why even better?  Spanish has much cleaner rules for reading than English does.  Generally letters have one pronunciation, with only rare exception, as opposed to English which seems to be made up entirely of them.  In addition Leili has her mother next to her, helping her along and always correct.

The results?  Yesterday when I was picking up Leili from Language Stars she was with Miss Carmen writing the word for campfire under the campfire they made.  Miss Carmen had to help with the spelling a bit, but this is a fantastic step for my little one!