Our reading program is clicking!

It's been a little over a month since we started using "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". It was a slow slog in the beginning, but Nugget was happy to do it every day because it was really just a review of the letter sounds she already knew. When we started to move more into actually reading words, it got harder and she wasn't as enthusiastic. But we stuck with it. And she was doing great! Sounding out words really well. Then the book started emphasizing reading things "the fast way" to start with, and it got tougher. I could tell she was bumping up against her limit.... but I could also see that she almost had it. She resisted pretty strongly for a couple days, we had to repeat one lesson because we stopped in the middle of it.... but then something clicked. And now she really is reading!

It's still pretty basic stories ("We see a duck. We can sit in the sun with that duck. It is fun in the sun."). But she finally seems to be realizing that she can do it. We've worked our way through "Hop on Pop" (with her reading or remembering most of the words, and me helping as necessary), and she's showing an interest in the words around her.

I've decided to start adding in some other reading work to bolster what she's gotten from "Teach Your Child to Read....". Today we started in on the first unit from The Moffatt Girls. I like that it gives her more practice with the sight words that we're already seeing in our phonics book. It's also a nice change -- where "Teach Your Child to Read...." is black-and-white, lesson-on-lesson, this is more like a program you'd see in school with coloring, pasting, singing, etc. Nugget gets a kick out of that sort of thing (although it also distracts her, which is one reason why "Teach Your Child to Read...." has been so effective, if not the most exciting thing).

Can I just say how happy I am that camp is over? She's so much more interested and engaged today, instead of being so drained. We did a ton of homeschool while Sprout was napping, and she's still going strong! In fact, right now she's writing and illustrating her first story!!

"I see a cat."

(Boy, do we need to get moving on that handwriting program! LOL)