Do you ever get that warm feeling, the small smile, when you suddenly encounter a memory from your childhood? When I was a kid, one of my mom’s favorite movies was Dave. There is one scene where Dave (the President) visits a school and the class is showing off an activity called Poor Joe. Joe…
Is anyone else having trouble getting their kids to concentrate already? We’ve hit this moment before where the excitement of the holidays makes school work impossible. I just don’t remember it happening so soon! I’m going to have to pull out all the stops with holiday themed work so we don’t lose ground in December! …
Do you ever feel like your kids need a small review of previous lessons? I was reading with Royal the other day and he just plain forgot what sound -sh makes. He’s a great reader so I was a bit confused. I think he might have been having a brain fart, if you will, but…
When learning to read, it’s all about the tricks. They’re not really tricks, of course, more like little chunks of information to build upon. Digraphs are a chunk of their own, and quite an important chunk! After all, if you don’t learn that ‘sh’ doesn’t say sss-ha, you’ll never be able to figured out that…
What do you do with a child who thinks reading is amazing, pretends to read constantly, yet isn’t quite ready for sounding out words? You teach them sight words! I’m pretty much on board with teaching phonics and that’s how we taught both Royal and Baloo, primarily. We limit sight words and push through with…
Getting kids excited about reading by themselves can be tricky. We spend years and years reading to them and they don’t want that to stop (and rightfully so) but sometimes that also means they resist reading by themselves. My kids are not really motivated readers. They take some prodding. But with easy reader books that…
How do you get your kids interested and invested in reading? I’ve mentioned it a million times now, but again, Logi-Bear is so close to reading. He wants to read and happily works with me, but I feel like he still needs a bit more work with letter sounds before he’s truly ready. But I…
For my 5-year-old, being a non-reader is one of his biggest frustrations (following when I tell him to get off video games). He feels left out because the rest of us can read and he cannot. I like to leave little notes lying around with words that he can read . (Cat, t-rex, his name,…
I’ve never been big on mythological things until I started reading books like Harry Potter and Twilight (yes, I read and loved Twilight. Although, The Host by Stephenie Meyer is far far better). Anyway, after getting into some of these alternate realities I started enjoying reading about the myths and how they started. Vampire’s in…
It does not feel like fall here. Not even close. We don’t really get fall at all but I feel like it’s time to start celebrating the leaves changing, pumpkins, and snuggling on the couch. So these fall beginning sounds cards are helping me to get into the fall mood. Logi-Bear is my last child…
I am a big fan of anything that makes learning to read a bit more fun and engaging. Reading is so challenging but so totally worth that, and many kids can see that from the beginning. Logi-Bear wants to read so so badly and he tries so so hard, but I still want him to…
Kids naturally love learning but I’ve found, at least with the younger ages, nonfiction books can be a bit overwhelming. The information often doesn’t read like a normal book and kind of just has little blurbs randomly spread over the page. My kids don’t often pick up nonfiction books, and I think that has something…