Yes...another book...
With Bella, our quest to beginning to read started with learning the ABCs.
Then, it became letter recognition of capital letters.
Then, recognition of lower-case letters.
Then, correlating those letters with the sounds that they made.
From there, we would put some letters together (like c, a, and t) and she would sound out each letter and make the word.
Once she was able to sound out the letters, and put them together, and understand what word she was sounding out (that c, a, and t actually made the word cat), we started doing a lot more of this.
That was all a year ago.
since then, we decided to go with a K curriculum that was just way too easy for her. So we started supplementing with a K reading and phonics workbook...and she just wasn't ready to sit still and work that long.
She hated it, quite honestly. It wasn't that she was incapable of doing the work, I just think it didn't fit into Bella's learning style.
Before, when I was just going with the flow, doing my own thing - she did great because it was really interactive, which fit into not only her learning style, but also her ability to pay attention (her age).
I think really it boils down to me not seeing that her academic level was advanced, but her social skills were perfect for her age group. I was pushing her academically, and wasn't seeing that I was at the same time pushing her beyond her capabilities of social-skills. sitting and working on a workbook for an hour every day was just too much for her.
So why did I get it in the first place? I wanted to teach her phonics rules, and well, I didn't even know them.
I heard about Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons from 2 of my friends, and it is also a recommended homeschooling resource by the Duggars :)
When I got it, I looked over the introduction, and the teaching method just made sense. It wasn't the easing into reading by starting with short vowels and then adding all the other rules...and even then, there are so many irregular words in the English language that I was just so confused on how to teach them...
This covers it all.
No, it doesn't teach the specific phonics rules, so I think I will teach those on top of this, using the workbook that we have.
I just like this teaching method better. It covers all the irregular sounds, blended sounds...you name it.
We're definitely going to be doing some review, but I don't see anything wrong with that, because even in the first week, we'll be incorporating new stuff as well (learning about long e in the word "me").
Today we did our first lesson, and just for kicks I had Balian join us. He was all about it and he did really well. So, I think it may be all 3 of us doing it together, which could be pretty fun - and then Balian isn't left out. We'll see how much Balian can handle at this point. I'm not going to push it, but if he's interested, great! He already knows all of his letters and letter sounds by recognition, so really, the next step is reading...it's just a matter of when.
Supposedly in 100 easy lessons, the child can read at a second grade reading level. By lesson 53 they are reading full paragraphs. It's pretty crazy.
I'll keep you posted on our progress as time goes on :)
