All kinds of treasures...

I don't know how most people envision their kids learning to read, but I just assumed they would start with Hop on Pop or something, then move on to those early reader books.  Right?  

The Doodlebug has always been very take-it-or-leave-it when it came to learning to read.  He would sound out a word or two, but he was like, why should I read this when you could totally read it to me.  I hadn't had any real luck in getting him interested in or excited about reading himself.  

Along came the Wizard of Oz.  I started reading it to the Doodle, and anyone who has been around him the past few weeks can tell you that he was enraptured.  Now, if you look at a page of Frank Baum's the Wizard of Oz, I don't think you would ever (ever) think, "Oh, here's what my kid should learn to read on."  

He is totally into it.  

I read every sentence with my fingers on the words, and stop at the words I think he can sound out/recognize.  He's learned to recognize a number of words by sight, and so every day we add in a few more.  He's reading some entire sentences, and also pointed out the word "little" on a street sign to us the other day.  Apparently I just had to find something he was actually interested in? 

Here are some words he wrote all by himself.  You can tell that he sounded them all out himself, but I think he did a pretty good job:

From top left to right: Oz (the Z has an extra loop), Drthe (Dorthy), Tin Man (with a giant circle in the middle?), Lion, and Todo (Toto).

Now for my Franny-girl with her bag of "treasures."  Her treasures are mostly random things she has picked up outside, at the park and, you know, in parking lots.  (Everyone lets their kids do that, right?) Anyway, she dumps them all out the other morning and I didn't realize she still had all this stuff.  I hadn't seen some of it in quite a while.

Multiple rocks ("this is the rock Uncle Andy gave me"), a tiny plastic ball, a corn kernel, and a McDonald's toy, circa 1997:

 A button, another rock, and a plastic flower she found at the playground:

Some more random stuff and a feather:

This is not the full extent of her treasures, by any means.  It also usually involves some dried berries, acorns, coins, and who knows what else.  She appears to select these treasures primarily based on them being similar in size (all choking hazards?). She carried around an avocado pit for several days before I finally snuck it out while she was sleeping.  :)

My darling girl: