I was 4 years old. My mother was pregnant with my first little brother and she would take a hot bath every morning. I would sit on the bathroom floor with the newspaper spread out on the floor in front of me with my right hand on her tummy to feel the baby move. She would teach me about roots, prefixes and suffixes, how most words were Greek or Latin in origin. I would stumble through the article she chose and she taught me how to find meaning of words I didn't know through context. She was very strict and a very difficult woman to please, but she raised a true reader. I never read children's books. She never talked "baby talk". She felt that if you learn that way, then you would have to un-learn that to learn "real" language. I was an extremely gifted child and she challenged me, constantly. I don't ever remember anyone reading aloud to me, I read aloud to them.
On Dec 3, 2013 Desert Kay Cowart wrote:
I was 4 years old. My mother was pregnant with my first little brother and she would take a hot bath every morning. I would sit on the bathroom floor with the newspaper spread out on the floor in front of me with my right hand on her tummy to feel the baby move. She would teach me about roots, prefixes and suffixes, how most words were Greek or Latin in origin. I would stumble through the article she chose and she taught me how to find meaning of words I didn't know through context. She was very strict and a very difficult woman to please, but she raised a true reader. I never read children's books. She never talked "baby talk". She felt that if you learn that way, then you would have to un-learn that to learn "real" language. I was an extremely gifted child and she challenged me, constantly. I don't ever remember anyone reading aloud to me, I read aloud to them.