Free Phonics Website for Pre-K and Up.

I just wanted to share this great website I found for my daughter the other day. 

http://www.starfall.com/ 

It's a free website (YAY!) that is geared toward teaching phonics - perfect for our little ones!  My daughter is in love with it!

Hope you enjoy it as much as we have.  :)

At their own pace

Do you ever have moments when you wonder if you should be homeschooling? My oldest child has always been behind in everything, but sometimes, I get it in my head that it is my fault- that I'm not capable of teaching her. At times, I have wondered if I should enroll her in a tutoring program for reading. She just wasn't getting it. Grant it, she's only six, and when I was six I wasn't reading either, but public school children are reading by kindergarten. And, while I hate to compare our progress to that of institutional schools, it's often hard to avoid- especially when many of her little friends and church peers are public schooled or involved in Mother's Day Out preschool programs at churches which use Abeka curriculum (which is quite advanced, in my opinion).

I worry that my darling little girl will feel silly or dumb because others her age (and younger) are reading and writing. Lately, I've noticed that she's started worrying about what others think of her. I don't know where this came from, but she has always been a sensitive little girl.

After purchasing a couple different programs (including Hooked on Phonics, which I think is a ridiculous program, but at least it comes with plenty of books, which made it worth the money), I finally listened to good advice and bought the book Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, Elaine Bruner).

This book is all you need, and it's fantastic. It's reading curriculum for beginners in one inexpensive book. I wish I would have bought it a couple years ago!

My daughter is doing so much better, now. Mainly, she struggles with blending sounds to make words, and this book as really helped her understand blending. The book has a script which tells you what to say and how to correct mistakes to keep kids on focused and on track- which is very helpful.

I think it also helps that she's a little older. She may not have grasped this last year or the year before- even with this amazing book (although I think she probably would have, but who knows!), but she is doing well now.

There will always be something she struggles with, but, as I have mentioned before, there are other things she does incredibly well- above those her age, so it evens out in the end.

My oldest boy, who is four, has had the benefit of listening in on the lessons and such over the years, and is not far behind his sister (even though they are 21 months apart), with the exception of writing. Merikalyn's letters are well formed, while Nolyn's are still hard to recognize. Still, at four years old, he is already doing simple math (addition and subtraction), and has already caught on to some of the aspects of reading- such as blending sounds- even though I have not sat down to teach him these things. I think overhearing our lessons while he plays has probably taught him much more than if I would have sat down and tried to cram it in his head. He's just that type of child.

Each child is going to be different, even within a family- and my children are definitely proof of that. While one child may need extra attention and guidance in one subject, another child may catch on quickly. I didn't even realize Nolyn understood all that he did, until I heard him hollering out answers in the background while I walked Merika through a lesson!

Potty training was very similar to our reading issue. Merikalyn struggled with it. As her fourth birthday neared, I vowed to have her potty trained before the party. Well, her birthday came and went, and she was still in pull-ups. I was mortified! So many of my friends had potty-trained two-year-olds, and here I was with a four year old who refused to use the toilet! I wish I could say it happened that year (to her credit, she came a long way with making friends with the porcelain throne that year), but she was FIVE when she finally got it down. Nolyn, on the other hand, was potty trained when he was three... and not by me. My mother-in-law worked with both of the kids when they were at her house, but he as just generally interested in the toilet. One day, I was in the kitchen and saw him run into the bathroom, strip off his diaper and plop his heiny on the toilet! Then, I saw him get off and put back on his diaper! Ha! He had been doing this for a couple weeks, and I was clueless! (He was only wetting his diaper during naps and night time.) A month later, he was in underwear all the time.

My point here is, some kids just take longer to learn things. We may be embarrassed because it's not on the schedule most other children are on, or because it makes us feel like a failure, but eventually, it'll happen. We just have to be patient and loving. We may need to seek a different method of teaching, or we may just need to be more consistent.

We'll see many of these moments as our children grow, I'm sure. What makes it worth it is... once they get it, they really GET it.

Made from what?

I love listening to little children talk. It's pretty funny how they mispronounce words. For example, my parents told my daughter they were going to a church convention, and she told me she wanted to go on a church adventure.

She calls the Renaissance Festival the Renaissance Vegetable. (At first the called it the "vestibule"!)

Today, we watched a show about how wheat was ground into flour and made into breads. As she was eating her muffin at lunch, she proudly exclaimed, "Mom! This muffin is made from weed!"

I choked on my drink. As it dribbled out my nose, I asked, "It's made from what?"
"Weed!"
"Are you sure it's made from weed?" I queeried.
"Oh, I mean wheat," she corrected, emphasizing the T, as she looked at the package trying to read the ingredients.

I don't want her going around telling folks we serve muffins made with drugs, now!

Teach Your Child to Read!

Did you know the English language is the largest language on earth? I have friends from other countries who had to learn English. All of them have told me that English was the most difficult language for them to learn (and some of them speak several languages). That is because our language has so many rules-- rules which break themselves far too often, plus words that sound alike but don't look alike along with words that look alike, but sound different.

Your children are probably already halfway there if they have a great vocabulary. It may take a while for them to read, but pressuring them doesn't help. The best thing we can do for our children is read to them often, DAILY, and hold meaningful conversations with them throughout the day to build their vocabularies and their love of reading.

One way to help your child get into reading is to give them small successes that spur them on to learn more. By teaching them six letters (over 3-6 weeks), they can get a taste for reading without knowing the whole alphabet! The best way to do this is to teach them a different letter each week. Instead of teaching them the name of the letter, teach the sound of the letter (phonics).

Try these six letters: B,C, H, S, T, and A. Instead of teaching them all the sounds of these letters, just teach the main, most common sound. (Remember, C sometimes sounds like an S, and A has quite a few sounds. There is no need to teach your child this yet.) The sound you will use for A is the same sound as in apple and cat.

Here's what one week might look like:
- Point out the letter B. Make the sound for letter B, not the name of it.
- Look through a book or magazine, or go on a walk and point out things that start with the B sound. You can even walk through your house pointing out these things. Call it a treasure hunt for the B sound!
- Have your child trace the letter B (written as large as a single piece of paper) with his or her finger.
- Write the letter B on a piece of paper (with or without lines) and have your child trace it with a pencil, then try to draw it himself. Don't worry about the size of his letter, just make sure he draws the letter in the right direction (most letters start at the top and go down) and is writing left to right. Do this daily.
- Keep talking about the sound it makes, and what words start with that sound or have that sound in it.

Each week, use a different letter, until you get to the letter A. With the letter A, you will talk about words like bat, cat, hat, mat, at, etc that have the letter A in it.

Now your child might be ready to read. Test the waters by writing out a short story like this. (Feel free to use this one):

CAT.
CAT HAS A HAT.
CAT HAS A BAT.
BAT CAT!

You might even want to draw (or cut out) some pictures of a cat with a baseball bat to make it more stimulating for your child. The stories do not need to be long (or even make a lot of sense). The point is your child can easily read these stories and will feel SO excited she can! This is a big accomplishment in her eyes and will have her eager to learn more.

If you don't already have a few Dr. Suess books, you may want to purchase or borrow a few. They're great starter books for new readers.