I was also going to add that we are going to stop again and work on some other stuff, just to make sure that he has really gotten the basics down. I think he has but we have time, and just want to make sure. I have some other things I have bought and we are going to work through them. To reasure me that he really has gotten it and isn't just guessing.
We must be twins. We're using HOP, I have IEW, and Prima Latina (with DVDs).....lol. :lol: Actually, my DS chose HOP over The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. We owned both and HOP is an awesome fit for him because he happens to think about reading the exact way that it teaches it (lucky for me).
My ds does this too. Sometimes he wants to work on reading or writing, sometimes he wants to do math, other times he's focused on science stuff. With him being so young I'm happy to oblige. If he's not in the mood for a certain subject, he'll fight big time & purposely give wrong answers. So, we wouldn't get anywhere if I tried to force it. That's also part of the reason I allow so much variety in what we use for reading. Sometimes he wants to work on reading but doesn't want to do 100 Easy Lessons, or doesn't want to do the writing involved in Explode the Code. So, he gets to choose what he wants, which makes it easier on us both.
LOL! Yes we must be twins! The only difference that I can see is that I am using Latin Primer (with the DVDs, CD, the works) this comming year. I figured I dont know anything at all about Latin, I better get something to help me along. It costs a lot more buying "the works" but I dont think I would even attempt teaching Latin without DVDs or something. I just put in an order for IEW yesterday and all of next years books. It came to a lot of $$$ but I feel much more comfortable going with something that will help me teach a subject. I just want to give him the best education that I possibly can. We liked HOP very much. It made it so easy to teach him to read. The tapes (I have the old one) were really annoying but it was a small price to pay to have him reading. He is really doing great now with his reading.
I just spent 10 minutes a day, M - F. But, those were an intense 10 minutes. The syllables were hard for her, especially ca, ce, ci, co, cu, cy; and sca, sci, sco, scu, scy. (They are pronounced kay, see, sigh, ko, ku, sigh and ska, sigh, sko, sku, sigh.) I actually moved on after she got all the syllables but these 2 sets and just reviewed these 2 sets daily until she got them. I put a small letter s above the c's before i, e, and y to help for a few weeks until she got the hang of it. It took 2 months for these to stick in her mind, she got the other syllables quicker. I had her spell them and read them both in order (da, de, di, do, du, dy), at random, and in contrasting pairs: am, ma (pronounced long a as a syllable as in ma-ker.) I did maybe a page or two of phonics pathways, we always worked for about 10 minutes, I just did what we could do in that time. When we were working through the word tables, I didn't require her to spell every word, just be able to spell every word. The first part of the Speller is all phonetically regular words, so spelling them is just sounding them out in reverse. I would have her spell from 2 to 8 words from each table depending on how well she was doing with them. A really difficult area for them, you'd want to spell every word in the table. Anything past 10 minutes, she wasn't retaining much. When you focus on what they need to know and where they are at and work in a focused manner, you can get an amazing amount of learning to occur in 10 minutes. We never spent more than 30 minutes a day on academic subjects, we sometimes spent more time if we did art or played educational games. Read, Write, and Type is good, although a bit expensive. You can try a free demo online. She also did Starfall a bit at first. I would only do the first two parts, ABC's and Learn to Read. The last 2 parts promote guessing. Once they've learned all their phonics and can sound out anything on their own, you can allow them to use the last 2 parts. And, Webster's Speller should allow them to read anything! Historically, students taught to read with the speller went right from working through the speller to reading out of the Bible. (And all they had was the KJV or similarly difficult Bibles back then.) I'd write out the Webster's words. In the books, the print is extremely small. And, while there are re-typed versions online that have a bit bigger font, the text is still small for a beginning reader. I also found that writing out the words on a whiteboard helped hold my daughter's attention more than working from a book. For my remedial reading students, I work mostly out of the book, with occasional work on a whiteboard, they can handle the small print.
thanks for that, its brilliant, just now got to wait for the book to arrive, and get started! i am sure there will be more questions and aahhhs to come thank you all for your support. i am kicking myself now, for not teaching her the sounds earlier, as she has known the letter names since she was 2.5 yrs, so maybe that is why she guesses more as she is still so unsure of sounds, but if i show her the letter she knows it, her attention span is zilch and if she finds something challenging, she gives up very easily and it is a battle to pursuade her to try and 99.9% of the time she can do it if she tries, but its a struggle none the less!! does anyone else have experience of this and how to deal with it. sorry to ask so many questions and go on i hope it makes sense???
I love IEW. We're only on Lesson 3 (gonna watch it Monday) but I LOVE IT!!!! We have the 1998 ed of Deluxe HOP (bought by my dad years ago for my oldest and she hated it...so glad I saved it). We don't use the cassette tapes at all. I don't use the sound flash cards really either. We do use the sight word cards and the letter cards to spelling words though. We've got 4 more "stars" to earn to complete Level 3 and then the Deluxe chapter books at the end to read. My son loves reading the books more than the workbook but he definitely would rather do HOP than write in Explode the Code :lol:
That made me laugh - I wasn't ready to learn higher math until I was 30! LOL...that was when I went back to college. I struggled in high school soo bad but in college all the "kids" would come up to me and ask how I got so good at math...hmmm? I proudly affirm that I got a B+ in calculus and my 19 yr old table mate begged me for my notes the last day of class because he had to repeat it. :lol: Something to be said for gettin older...
i have found a couple of things which look quite good, oxford reading tree songbirds phonics reading books, and reading made easy with blend phonics. Has anyone used either of these and if so are they any good??? thanks
I like the Leapfrog "Talking Letter Factory" for teaching the sounds. You can't beat the repetition, you could go crazy repeating the sounds often enough for a child's tiny brain to learn them, "froggy" (as my kids call Tad the frog) keeps repeating them cheerfully in cute songs. You can also do the first 2 parts of starfall online, ABC's and learn to read. It takes a lot of repetition! And, they really do need to be learned well, almost "over-learned" for automatic phonetic decoding.
Blend Phonics is a great beginning book--it doesn't teach all the sounds they'll need eventually, but it's a great start, easy to understand and use. Don Potter's Blend Phonics Reader is also good for remedial students, it, along with nonsense words, can be helpful for breaking the guessing habit. The best thing about Blend Phonics is that it just teaches the sounds in words--no stories. That is actually the most effective and efficient way to do it, it really does just waste time to do stories before they've learned the phonics basics, it's better to just learn all the sounds and practice on lists of words, stories early on can be counter-productive and lead to a bit of guessing, although one or two Bob Books for motivational purposes can be helpful. However, they generally are excited just about being able to read "STOP" and "WAL-MART" in the early stages. The stories in the A Beka books are the only stories I've found that I like--they aren't predictable so don't lend themselves to guessing. They're also less boring than your run of the mill decodable stories. I haven't seen the Oxford Reading Tree books.
thank you elizabeth, i live in england and all the schools use 'oxford reading tree' i have spent sooo much money on all these books, but at least i have 2 younger ones who will benefit! sam x
Hey, Don't worry. I have homeschooled 10 kids and they are all different. My challenge was one of my boys. He just couldn't get into reading. I would get SO frustrated then I would go read the Moore's book "The Successful Family Homeschool Handbook". I tried very hard not to push him because I knew doing that may make him hate reading. He was 12 at the time! And do you know that by the time he was 13 he was reading great. He also LOVED to read and read all the time. So don't worry, and try to not push. By the way, if you haven't read the book I mentioned it is excellent. Out of all my homeschool books it is one of my favorites.
Hey there, Sounds like you've gotten a lot of great advice. I just wanted to say don't get discouraged... my son just turned 7 and isn't reading on spot yet. He is getting better slowly but I am not pushing him too very hard. He's just like your daughter...if he doesn't get it immediately then he gets mad and frustrated and gives up. I did 100 easy lessons and it worked somewhat. We also use the starfall website and it is amazing, I love it because it's many different levels. You can start them wherever they're comfortable at. Also, I was going to suggest when you try to read a book that you read one page and she read the next, it seems to help my son and he picks the shorter page to read so he feels a bit more comfortable. And if he gets stuck I help him out on a word. But sometimes he gets mad if I jump in and help too quick, lol. I would say if she asks for help with a word...sound it out for her. But good luck on everything and hope you enjoy that site and hope the tip of 'sharing' reading helps you. Oh, there's also a series of books like that...where mom/dad reads the big page and the kid reads the short page with simpler words. It's the 'we both read' series and they start off simple on level pre-k and go up further. Best of luck!
thank you thats great bren - 10 kids wow and here i am worring about 1 [blush], thank you for the ideas and welcome autumnleavz - thanks for the tips wil be trying them
