The teacher-dork in me is out in full effect. I want to give Cal as much as I can on my end to make sure he does great in school. I said at the end of last year, I wanted to work with him on reading some this summer-- not a lot, but getting him to start recognizing site words. I bought these flash cards:
I kept them in my car forever, and then as I realized that summer is starting to wind down and I better get on it, I pulled them out. We started with 5 words. I would hold them up while at a stop light and he would sound out the word. Once he got it without hesitation, it went into the "he's got it" pile. If he hesitated or struggled at all, it went to the back of the pile. He is up to about 30 words right now. His issue is rushing through words. If he would go slow and sound them out, he will get more. But that's part of learning! I try to go through our pile at least once a day. Some days, he's super into it. Other days, he is into the dump truck out the window-- and that is totally fine too. I don't push him when he isn't into it. I want him to be excited!
A friend also told me about BOB BOOKS. Have y'all heard of these?
Each book picks a sound and focuses on it throughout the book: "Mat Sat. Mat sat on Sam...." I ordered these and we tried to read one a few nights ago and it was painful. Cal was TIRED and not wanting to sound anything out. He would look at the page saying "Mat sat. Sam sat." and would say "Scott sits with Mat...can we be done now?" ha! My cue that we were done! So we put the books away.
Until Tuesday night. Cal came to me and said, "can we do some reading tonight? Like me reading to you?" I took a deep breath and reached for some patience from my back pocket and was ready for another night of him making up sentences... then this happened:
He was doing it! Woohooooo! And, as you can see, he was excited about it! There are several "levels" to these books. They come in a little box and levels 1-4, and each level has 2 books (level 1, book 1 and book 2)...does that make sense? On this night, we read both of the level 1 books multiple times. I am sure there is a whole lot of memorizing going on here, but he is still stopping himself to sound out the words. It's a start, right??
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