Alexandra has been learning her letters for a couple of years now. She was always pointing to the writing on Chris’ t-shirts, asking what this letter was, and that one. So he found an online site that helped kids learn the letters and their sounds and we would let her play on it whenever she wanted. She did it so much that eventually, it got boring. She knew them all and wanted a new challenge.
So, just like he has with all the other kids, Chris would sit with her, writing out very simple words and helping her learn how to sound them all out. Things like cat,hat,sat. Or mama, papa. Simple basic words. Whenever they were done with a little session, she would go running around the house, waving the paper in front of her and read it to anyone who would listen. It was pretty cute.
But all too soon, she tired of that. It was boring. And she wanted to read more than Papa had time to help her. So she took matters into her own hands. And started grabbing books off the bookshelves to read. 
We didn’t want her to get frustrated, so we gave her the most easy, simplest one we have, thinking it would keep her busy for several weeks. Oma, Papa, and I helped her sound out the words she didn’t know, and she was off. She ended up reading through almost the entire thing in one day, even though I kept asking her to stop because I didn’t want her to get too frustrated or burnt out.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/lhm7HYLROXQ[/youtube]
After she read this book for several days, over and over, she asked to read her own verse during family scriptures. So Chris would help her read the shortest of the verses, giving her hints on how to sound out new words, and just telling her what the difficult words were. It sounds a bit daunting, reading the Book of Mormon as your second book ever, but it is actually a great tool. So many of the same words appear over and over, that she quickly memorized what they looked like, and can now read even longer verses with just a bit of help on the more difficult words.
We are amazed at how hard she has worked to learn this new, important skill. Even though she has done it the complete opposite of all the other children, who learned to read in German first, and then English. But whatever works for her. 🙂
Good job, Alexandra!