Spread

"Spread" is the first word my daughter has read.  Actually read, as in sounded it out, made sound/symbol connections.  It was in a one-word-per-page book (Pizza, by Saturnino Romay, found in a discard pile at school and I snatched it up because the author shared my father-in-law's first name).  We've read it a few times and she's memorized it, but she'd forgotten the word and the picture wasn't jogging her memory, so she looked at that word, at its first letter, and started "ssssss..."  She'd never gotten beyond this point before, nor had I even suggested it.  Then I heard her say "pppppp,"  "ssssppppp,"  "spread!" The look on her face is one I'll ever forget.  The incredulous look that she actually made sense of those shapes on a page.  There's nothing like it, when they start to crack that code.  Oh, she's a ways off from really reading, but I've noticed the past month or so she is asking all the time what things say, what word that is, etc.  She wants it so badly, my little bookworm, who has often said she'd choose books over toys if she ever had to make that choice. I am so excited for her to begin this journey and pray that it comes easily to her.