Reading and Writing

Syd's still plugging away!

writing words in her speller's dictionary

reading a bit of an early chapter book at the library

Syd's still practicing every day, and getting a little better every day, but she still gets so frustrated and upset over unlocking unfamiliar words that I'm feeling like quite the troll mother for keeping her at it (although to be fair, five minutes ago she got so frustrated and upset over following the directions barked out by Willow's Bop It! that she shouted "I hate you!" at it).

I've got a couple of other strategies to try out soon, however. My friend Tina suggested having Syd choose board books to read, which is brilliant--each one is short, easy, completely do-able, and yet...a real BOOK!  It sounds like a great confidence builder, and great practice normalizing book reading. I also suddenly remembered reading on someone's blog once that they had a kiddo who, too, lacked the confidence to read a real book. This blogger--and I wish I could remember who it was!--wrote out every word on one page as a flash card, had the kid read those, then ordered them just as they were on the book page, had the kid read those, and only THEN presented the kid with the actual book and the actual page that she wanted him to read. This is also pretty brilliant, since we could spend days working through the actual words in the book, I could stagger the words that I know will be frustrating, and then, after having done all the hard decoding work already, Syd could have the satisfaction of reading an entire book smoothly and easily, just as she most wants (and expects she should be able to, sigh) to do.

This will likely wait until after our road trip, however, which is in just a week and a half. Until then, Syd's pretty happily working through the Montessori Green Series and a book of little reproducible easy reader mini-books (she copies them, fills in the blanks, illustrates them, staples them, and reads them over and over to anyone that I can force to listen to her--they've got some decoding to be done, some composition, some storytelling, and lots of great repetition and confidence-building in the reading). I might just hide the public library's reading form altogether until we're back home again (and she's forgotten that she pitched a fit and tried to throw it away), and then try my new strategies.

One day soon, this kid will be reading fluently, easily, and happily. One day soon, I'll find myself getting pissed off because she won't put her book down to empty the dishwasher, or put away her laundry. I'll gear up to chastise her, and then remember how short a time ago it was that reading was the most frustrating, most miserable thing I'd ever made her do.

And then instead of griping, I'll grab my own book, sit down next to her, and read beside her for the rest of the day.