The sound of the door shutting still rings loud in my ear, but I think my heart was beating louder. It was the first time I would be alone with my 8 month old (and two dogs) – my wife had back to back skype sessions for 9 hours, and had just shut the door on the four of us!
I knew how to change a diaper, I knew how to make his milk and Neil was just a baby – what could possibly go wrong!
There is no defined age as such for starting phonics. You can start with letter sounds once the child speaks clearly and fluently. We started at around 2 years and 8 months, however fluency in terms of reading CVC words came around 3.5 years and in terms of reading entire sentences and books, by 4 years.
The brilliance with which the author engages the youngest of the readers combined with the wonderful illustrations in the book make this a fantastic read. The story had my child hooked right from the first page, with the awesome shopping list illustrations.
As many of our pre-schoolers may start physical school later this year, we parents face unique challenges. Of them, teaching them to be safe is the biggest one. How do we do that when they have remained relatively isolated the last one year in the safety of their house? Through books of course!
As a toddler parent, I’ve struggled with explaining the Covid-19 pandemic to my 4 year old. Why does he have to be locked up inside the house? Why does he have to wear a mask? Why does he have to keep washing his hands? You obviously cannot tell a toddler that there is a mysterious virus out there, and that all the doctors in the world are struggling to contain its impacts. The book ‘The Germ Academy’ has cleverly explained the phenomenon from the perspective of a child.
Frisky turned out to be nothing like the other dogs we had. On his fourth day home, the tiny dog decided to go out and conquer the world. And so he barged into our neighbor’s house, scaring their poor 3 year old Labrador with his aggressive barking. However, once the two dogs had amicably decided that Frisky was the stronger one (!) they became inseparable, and soon there was a gang of a Labrador, Dachshund and Doberman in our neighborhood (and if you are familiar with dog breeds and their sizes, you would know why this made everyone chuckle!). So, clearly Frisky was not scared of anybody. But, what did this mean for his relationship with dad? Was he going to be as aggressive with him?
