The fat cat sat on the mat.

So, after completing the first lesson in the "big girl" Hooked on Phonics set earlier today, my daughter can officially read most three-letter words that end in -at. Except "sat," which for some reason she has to sound out every time she sees it, even if she just read it two words ago.

She read the little cartoon at the end of the lesson in the workbook, although I didn't manage to get it on video because I was too busy trying to be all encouraging and shit. Once we managed to convince her to actually look at the words, rather than just telling us what was happening in the picture, she got the hang of it relatively quickly. I still had to remind her that the words "is sitting in a big chair" hadn't appeared in the earlier lesson, so maybe "sat" would be a better choice, and for some reason whenever she couldn't figure out a word she thought it was funny to insist it said "pig," but after a couple repeats she had it down cold.

A few hours later (after doing nothing educational at all) there was a lull in conversation at dinner, so I wrote "The fat cat sat on the mat" on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She read her 'secret message' right away with no help (sounding out the offending word, of course), despite having never tried to read a mix of sight words and phonics words before then. So she's actually reading, not just guessing from pictures or memorizing placement in lists of words.

I don' t know who is prouder - the kid or us. No, wait - it's us. She's freaking brilliant, this one.

And she's asked me three or four times since dinner when she gets to do the next lesson. Hooked on Phonics, we love you!