It's funny that the Nintendo DS/Sony PSP came up.... I'm a gamer, I love playing while in line (when I'm not reading) or when waiting for the doc's appt. which lately, seems to be an hour and a half After our appointed time ;p
I'm all for some DS games, as they include some text (and instructions! which require Reading!!) Originally, we'd read the directions to him... but after a while, that got pretty old (pretty fast actually
) So, I always suggest that he give the directions a try and come to me if he gets stuck on a word. This is working out pretty well.... he tries it on his own first now, which is cool stuffs
Now, I'd rather he waits til he is old and crusty to be a gamer (gamers, especially Boy gamers can be rather... ick) but I'm glad to be able to use those games to get him reading just a bit more.
By doing this on his own, he's also working on cognition... if you've ever heard a first grader read you'll know that cognition is Rarely a part of that reading experience... they are taught some weird way of sounding out the letters (instead of words as I was) and no way do they "get" the word they are sounding out... an example would be afternoon. He knows this word and uses it in speech, but he hadn't come across it in day to day reading... he sounded it out as ah fff te eh rrr nn o o nn. I didn't know what he was sounding out nor did he!!! But going over the word together, he figured it out by the time we got through the first Aft sound.
Grr, run on, sorry!
PS- Definitely on the Text size. At the docs, he wanted the Kindle up to 6, and read quite a few samples we'd downloaded from Amazon... it was quite awesome