Isabelle: Underestimated Scholar of the Year!

To think I didn't believe Isabelle would ever learn to read! She is proof that with a little bribery and a lot of patience, almost every large parrot can learn :)

Last week I decided we needed to wrap up the rest of her uppercase alphabet, since we're going to be testing soon. She learned V, X, Z and Q pretty quickly - and then I added th, ch, sh, wh, qu, etc. just to make sure she was good to go on basic phonics.

Sweet Isabelle is such a second born. She learns quickly, but probably not as thoroughly as Ellie. With this cutie, I'm in catch-up mode. I only have so many creative brain cells at my disposal, and they seem employed keeping up with Ellie and running a business.  I didn't pair every single letter with a vocabulary word as she learned, she hasn't seen many Youtube videos about elephants or ducks, as I did with Ellie. But, we manage!

And oh does she manage! The Underestimated Scholar Of The Year Award Goes To.... Isabelle!

Having taught her the uppercase alphabet, I grabbed a few of Ellie's library books so she could start reading actual pages. And then remembered.... books include lowercase letters. Which she doesn't know. *sigh*

My poor second-born parrot.

SO. Now we are rushing through her lowercase letters. Not only does she keep up with learning four new letters each day, she excels! She's also reading sentences!

For both Isabelle and Ellie, I've realized that having them pre-read the sentences before having to make a selection improves their accuracy. Also, I'm writing out Dr. Seuss stories onto flash cards. It's a great way to have fun sentences and topics, without the dilemma of OMG ALL THE WORDS ON THE PAGE! Ellie had 100% accuracy last night on one of her stories (8 sentences), and Isabelle did really well in this video too!

Once they've mastered these sentences, I'm going to try to generalize it to the actual book page - they'll probably have memorized the story by then, and I'll help them to be able to read the sentences in the book :)

Here's Isabelle for a whole training. She reviewed a, b, d, and e from the day before, learned f, g, h, and l, then read lowercase words like a boss! And THEN she read a story with sentences!

Go Isabelle!!!

Oh Mom! Pretend Fish Can't Like Things!

On Sunday I  spent the afternoon and evening with a childhood friend, Shari. I lamented mildly that I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do next with Ellie. She's reading sentences and is bored - there's no more challenge. I also wrote stories about her toys, but they are all true statements - and it would be weird to write, "Zed swims in the water outside" when he is clearly sitting next to us on the sofa, not swimming.

I thought the concepts of true/pretend would be too hard to explain. The thought of it made me think I needed some wine.

Monday I bit the bullet anyway and decided to write statements that were: TRUE / NOT TRUE / PRETEND.

• True would be: Ellie likes pancakes.
• Not true would be: Ellie likes Isabelle
• Pretend would be: Pretend Ellie is going for a ride in the car.

Today I wrote simple stories for Ellie and put them on flashcards:

• Zed is a pretend fish.
• Real fish live outside.
• Real fish swim in water.
• Zed likes green.
• Zed likes Ellie.
• Ellie likes Barney.
• Zed doesn't like grass.

Then a story for Barney, her elephant.

• Barney is a pretend elephant.
• Real elephants live outside.
• Real elephants are HUGE!
• Real elephants eat grass.
• Barney is a toy.
• Barney likes Ellie.
• Ellie likes Barney.

Then I asked her reading comprehension questions. Here is the video. When I got to, "Ellie likes Barney." She answered "True." But "Barney likes Ellie" - she answered "Not True."

The same happened with Zed. "Ellie likes Zed" was true. "Zed likes Ellie" she answered "Not True."

She got all of the other reading comprehension questions correct - Zed is a pretend fish. Real elephants live outside...

So, a few possible (if strange) conclusions:
1. Ellie trusts her own judgment above what she's reading
2. More interestingly - Ellie appears to understand that things that are pretend do not have the capacity to "like" anything. Only "real" things can "like" things. And I may be wrong - but I think that's a very advanced concept, actually!

Joe was really funny. I was in the middle of telling him the story...
Joe: Wait - you told her that her fish and her elephant like her? Why would you say that? They're fake!
Me: STOP IT!!! SHE'S OBVIOUSLY YOUR BIRD CHILD AND YOU ARE BOTH SMARTER THAN I AM!!!

Isabelle, My Tiny Dancer

This little girl. I love her so! She started learning how to read in March/April, and has mastered all of her uppercase letters now, knows digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh, kn), can read words and sentences.

She's essentially caught up to Ellie - except I feel her education is lacking in vocabulary. Ellie's had nine months of vocab practice, and Isabelle only two... and that, fleetingly since I focused more on letters and words.

If Ellie is my buddy, my (awesome) challenge, my little friend, Isabelle has my heart. When I think of the beautiful moments that make life ridiculously special, so many of them are comprised of Isabelle. She is innocent and sweet, curious, expressive. Unlike her sister, she's easygoing and resilient. There's not much that a kiss, a snuggle, and a little chat can't fix for her little heart.

The other morning I was too busy to do their lessons. Her learning basket/station was on the sofa where we work together, and she hobbled over to it (she's one-footed). She sat for a half hour on her play station singing, talking, dancing, twirling... she brought her toys there, she pretended to slay dragons, all poofy and scary monster cockatoo style. She was just so very happy to play on her learning station, oblivious to the world, talking to herself and passing the time, waiting for me to join her for lessons.

My heart just melted and I gave her so many kisses and hugs.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to teach her next. Like Ellie, her accuracy rate on short words is decreasing from boredom. Tonight on 56 words it iwas 71.5%. (Previously it had been 85%.) I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and teach her lowercase letters... by then hopefully I'll have figured out this pretend story thing with Ellie, and can just apply it to Isabelle too.

Last week I asked Ellie a bunch of questions. In our interview, she declared she didn't like Isabelle.

Apparently the feeling is mutual! This is hilarious.

Bored Ellie is Bored

Ellie has different kinds of lessons now. It used to be just "Vocab". Then it was "Book" or "Vocab". Now it's Book, Vocab or Story. But she's getting bored again. She can read sentences - just the challenge of reading sentences isn't enough anymore. She wants to learn.

I tried doing some simple stories:
"This is Zed. Zed is a fish. Zed likes outside. Zed likes water. Zed likes green. Zed doesn't like grass."

That was OK - but she didn't want to keep it up. Last night we worked on body parts. She can touch Zed's eyes, his nose, she can give him a kiss, touch his tummy, and his tail.

I also have a stuffed elephant that she likes. We reviewed names (my name is Mom, your name is Ellie, her name is Isabelle, fish's name is Zed) and then I asked her if she wanted to name her elephant? ("Yes.") I figured we'd do one traditional option (Barney) and one that would help her practice the little-used X - Xerxes. She picked Barney to be his name... and now she knows Barney's big ears, that he has four feet, a long nose, and eyes.

I also taught her homonyms - know and no. Ellie knows red. Ellie knows green. Ellie knows blue. She was so cute. I said: "Do you know red?"

She kept picking "NO", so confused! Then she figured it out :) "Yes!"

Anyway, all that to say.... I'm running out of things to teach her again? She's bored - she can read sentences. She knows Zed lives in water (and Ellie lives in a house). I started to make up stories, but then thought... that would be so confusing. "Zed lives in the outside water. Outside water is called creek."

But Zed is here, next to her, and not in water. He's not outside in the creek. Barney doesn't live outside either, he's next to her too...

Maybe I'll try to say, "This is a pretend story.. Let's pretend...."

I think she challenges me at least as much as I challenge her.

Ellie's Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Ellie's such an interesting creature - she's cerebral, not affectionate or cuddly. She wants to be mentally stimulated more than anything. She's all brains--albeit mostly mute. But she is sooooo sensitive, and can become a sad little bugger when she doesn't get her way.

I have been gone 12 days out of the last 16 days, and Ellie was really upset. I asked her questions Monday night to see if I could cheer her up:
--Do you want to play vocab? ("No")
--Do you want to read a book? ("No")
--Do you want a pancake? (Her favorite food!) ("No")
--Do you want eggs? ("No")
--Do you want tea? (Her favorite drink!) ("No")
--Do you want water? (She tolerates but doesn't love water) ("Yes")
--Do you want it hot or cold? (She doesn't like cold beverages) ("Cold")

So basically she was totally miserable and dejected and wanted only cold water and to be left to sulk about her life! She was pretty nippy, so I told her, "You can have a bad day. It's OK to be upset. But you can't bite or hurt others when you are upset."

I gave her some space to feel the fullness of her feelings - and tried to bribe her with treats. It took a few days, but my moody little critter came around!

We played this morning, and then I was away working for a good ten hours. When I started her lessons tonight I asked her:
--Do you like treats? ("Yes!")
--Do you like vocab? ("Yes!")
--Do you like pancakes? ("Yes!")
--Do you like Mom? ("No.")

By the time we finished our lessons I asked her again, "Do you like Mom?" ("Yes.")

There's something innocent about asking her questions. She shares her heart without shame or hesitation--she doesn't know those things. She just expresses her opinions, and sometimes she's not happy. And that's OK :)

My tough cockatoo, let me show you her.

Ellie's Fidget Stick

Ellie has begun bringing a little stick to chew on to all of her lessons. She actually holds it in her foot while she munches on treats - and then puts it back in her mouth for her learning! She's so odd... and, like many school children, so not odd. She literally fidgets while she learns.

Here she is - we were working on silent reading vocabulary... with a little stick in her mouth.

Ellie's Test

Some brainy stuff first.

Reading is considered a complex cognitive process utilizing many features of the brain - including the ability to visually process symbols into meaningful communication (orthography), the ability to hear sounds and combine them with the symbols (phonological awareness), the ability to put those sounds and symbols together for vocabulary development (semantic processing), etc.

The hallmark of literacy is the triggering of the self-learning mechanism - the ability to read something and add it to one's internal vocabulary - and thereby learn more things. (This is called lexical orthography.)

Pigeons and baboons have (shocking scientists) mastered orthography - the ability to decipher strings of words into 'possible meaning' - they weren't meaningful vocabulary, but they could do it. Over and over again, however, scientists say, "Reading is a uniquely-human skill."

Anyway, lots of mumbo jumbo to say, I've finished the article as far as it can go (12 pages) and have designed the tests. The first one is super easy (it may be too easy for Ellie - she gets bored and her scores go down on easy stuff), but it'll be simple words. Birds'll read them under blind conditions, easy peasy. Isabelle already does this, and she's only started learning to read two months ago.

The really cool test - the hallmark of reading - is whether the birds can decode words by sight, and then later recall them when verbally prompted. I tested her ability to silently read words and later recall the when verbally prompted...

AND OMG SHE DID IT!!! Afterward I cried with happiness and called Joe and my Mom! :)