End of Week Success

I just want to share a quick success from today and some observations that I want work through.

First of all, the success!! Today has been a reading day for MB. Although we had a small, and somewhat minor tiff over the Reading Lesson, when we did it, it went well. Her reading was flowing and she is starting to find a rhythm, starting to understand that some words tend to follow others and that there is a pattern to sentences and such. All those things that make reading flow smoothly. Later, she had me make out a reading homework sign-off sheet like her ps friends have. I sketched it out with pencil and paper, since our printer is on the fritz. Once that was done we sat down and read for 15 minutes from Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. When the timer went off, she proceeded to read two more pages until she got to a "better" stopping point. It is a very tough book for her, on the high end of her reading level with lots of those 'egyptian' words. We signed off the sheet and reading was completed for the day, or so I thought.

Tonight, at bedtime we picked out the picture books for us to read together. Then MB brought over Go, Dog, Go and told me that she wanted to read a couple of pages. She flipped through and told me what page she was going to stop on - about 6 pages. Then she read all but the last 4 pages. She just kept on going until she became too tired and started missing easy words. I convinced her to stop there so that she would not become anymore frustrated.

She was so very excited. Running to her daddy and telling him all about it. High-fiving me and a huge smile on her face. It was a wonderful moment for me and MB. I have known that she could read for awhile, but it just wouldn't sink in to her. She found it tedious and frustrating. I could get her to read her lesson and maybe a page here and there. But nothing like today. Voluntary reading *shiver*

So what has changed. First of all it may just be the beginning of the 'click.' But also I think some of it has to do with a change in my approach that was so subtle that I didn't even catch myself doing it until today. 100 Easy Lessons focuses on individual sounds of each letter - breaking the word down to however many sounds the word has letters. Recently, I guess, I have started pointing out to her how the words can be broken down into groups that respresent a 'word family' or a single sound. Instead of trying to focus on five or more sounds, she instead can focus on two or three. Why does this work? She doesn't become so distracted and *lost* when trying to sound out words.

Even though this change was unplanned, I think I am going to run with it. We will still continue with 100 Easy Lessons because we are 2/3 of the way through and it is good practice. But I am going to pull back out the phonics workbook again and start working through word families again. If her wonderful, memorizing machine of a brain can absorb the word families - then it will only help in the process. It wasn't that I didn't think word families or sight words were important, I just didn't want to overwhelm her so much here at the beginning of the year. So my plan had been to finish 100 Lessons and then pull back out the phonics workbook, along with a dolche sight word workbook I had for us to work through. I will just start feeding these in throughout the day now.

Anything else? I will be taking bets on whether or not we are even finished with SOTW 1, by this time next year. Unfortunately, she has me, the cultural history diva teaching her, so we spend so long on each chapter studying the ancient cultures and doing arts & crafts or having impromptu plays. I don't want to rush her, or myself, through the process - so it will take however long it takes, and when we are done we will move on. What is the rush anyway. It just feels funny to tell people that we started 2 months ago and we are just on Chapter 4.

The Horizons math program is going well so far. It is all review, but I have not gotten any grief over actually having the lesson or doing the work. MB likes the fact that she does 2 or 3 different activities each lesson.

K broke out yesterday with some strange rash across her face. I still have not figured out what it could be and have been racking my brain trying to figure out if we have done anything different recently. The doctor told me treat it with antihestimine and keep an eye on it. So, she has been fairly quiet. The rash has started to fade today, after a couple of doses, and it doesn't seem to bother her anymore.

EM is *this* close to pulling up. She has also been experiencing many more tumbles because of her new-found abilities. She is fighting being my cuddle-baby now and wants to be down where she is in control. Except for being a mouth explorer (something actually new for us), she has been a really great, easily entertained, and very entertaining baby.

We have a busy weekend planned with some work on the house for the winter planned, hopefully a playdate for MB and then a trip to a local goat dairy. If I don't get back on, have a great weekend!

Peace,

Amy