Time to go one level up from single letter phonics

Daddy Chan pointed out to me recently, that our blog posts seem to get longer and longer nowadays. Well I do notice the same, it might not be too easy for our readers' eyes, but then there are just too many great and funny stuff about little Renzo, which we must pen down. I am blogging quite a bit about Renzo's education, whereas Win tends to focus more on fun facts. Hmm, am I that academic driven??!!!

Anyway last night (Sept 19), our little boy impressed his parents on 3 different occasions.
Shock #1
When I returned home from a tiring long day at work, I suddenly heard Renzo singing this new song with his Daddy, while he was finishing up his dinner in his high chair:
"Are you sleeping, are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing
Ding dong bell, ding dong bell."
Well to side track a bit, Renzo baby is able to sing the complete lyrics (or at least 80%) of all these songs:
"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
"ABC"
"Do Re Mi"
"Baa Baa Black Sheep"
"Ten Little Indians"
"London Bridge is Falling Down"
"Old Man Donald had a Farm"
"Happy Birthday to You"
"12354, once I caught a fish alive" (fortunate, or unfortunately, in Burmese, LOL)
"小红帽"
"我是一个大苹果"
"一起去郊游"
"泥娃娃"
"小白船"
"送别"
Daddy Chan told me that he started singing this song all on his own on their way home from childcare, when Daddy casually questioned baby about what did his teacher Florence teach him in school.
He then followed by singing another new song "Incy Wincy Spider" and I have to praise the childcare teachers for introducing wonderful nursery rhymes to kids at such a young age, some of those songs are indeed not easy to catch.

Shock #2
Since we communicate mainly in English at home, Renzo's most frequent exposure to Chinese language is through this set of interesting "right brain training" educational material called "智慧宝". He's been watching this together with his Leapfrog DVD almost everyday, and learned at least 20 Chinese words from it. He could recognize those words by looking at the associated pictures. Two weeks ago when we were having our holiday in China, my mother pointed at the word "门"on the train door and asked Renzo what's that, he answered "门" loud and clear, which caught us by surprise because we always thought he knows those words by looking at pictures. So this time round, I decided to test him on his Chinese by covering all the pictures, although we did not revise with him for the past 2 weeks due to traveling, he could read 11 out of 15 words absolutely correct. On a side note, we were watching a Chinese educational channel during our trip and they were introducing the wonderful right brain training method, a 7-9 year old boy could recite a given list of 30 random words in perfect sequence, and even reverse sequence. And you could pick say number 7 and he will tell you what's the 7th word, or vice versa. We were totally blown away and wanted to get the same training material (costs RMB589 per set) for Renzo, then to realize that the set he's been using since he was 1 year old, which was bought by my father, is the exact same set they were promoting on TV. LOL, lucky us!!!

Shock #3
My sister Kelly just passed me an old Alphabet book for Renzo, nothing spectacular about the book but it caught Renzo's attention immediately when I presented it in front of this little boy, at that moment he was sitting on his potty and passing motion indeed. I guess the most interesting part of this book, is that it has interactive sliding panels for each alphabet, so that kids could slide those panels to show/hide the Alphabet, the Letter starts with that Alphabet, and the Picture describe that letter one by one. Knowing that Renzo could recognize Chinese words without looking at associated pictures, and the fact that he is way stronger in his Alphabets and their Phonics sounds, I decided to experiment something new. I showed Renzo the word DOG, and break it down to phonics sounds D-O-G and after a few rounds of reading with Renzo, when I hid the picture of a dog and showed him only the word DOG, he could read it by saying D-O-G in phonics one by one, and shouted DOG!

These great experience with little Renzo inspired me to search further on how to teach phonics as I believe he is ready for the next level of phonics learning - blending words with vowels. So I went to my favorite Tamarind's blog to dig out this article:
http://tamarindphonics.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-teach-phonics.html

I remember when I first read this, Renzo baby was only 7 months old, so I chucked it away quietly with the thought that we will not be using it any time sooner, since it works for kids who masters all the 26 alphabets and their phonics sounds only. Time really flies and now I believe the 25 months old Renzo baby is fully (if not at least almost) ready for this.

I printed out the "A" words, cut them out and pasted them on cards, and used scotch tape to wrap them around in order to minimize wear and tear. They are the "new toys" for Renzo and we plan to go through with him every night before bed time.

Will we be successful in teaching Renzo how to read? Well the most successful case I've seen before, is a 27 months old boy who could read a bunch of words by breaking them down with phonics sounds, and even know the meaning of them all. (His mother is the one who advised me to get Leapfrog DVD for Renzo). Let's see how is Renzo's progress after 2 months of practice and learning then. I guess there is no hard and fast rule to teach a toddler at this age, all I need to do is to be extremely PATIENT, repeat, repeat, and REPEAT..