It's nice when things you've been waiting for finally happen

I've been watching (and helping) James read for a good while now, and one thing I've been waiting for is the set of synapses to fire that make words out of letter sounds, rather than just recognising that 'this group of letters says "water"'. For ages now he's known that the letters make sounds, and he could sound out the letters in a word, but he couldn't quite manage to make the sounds into syllables and words.

Somewhere over Easter, the necessary mental connections hooked up :) Every day, he's supposed to come home from school with a book from the reading box appropriate to his ability - since Xmas this has been one with a yellow label on the spine, and since Easter it's been obvious that there are NO challenge at all to him (<molesworth>Zoom zoom, u kno this bit</molesworth>) Yesterday, he was moved up a box :) (<molesworth>chiz!</molesworth>)