Frustrated Mom Help

[Jshersh71]

[Kitty-Cat]

That must be hard. Have you tried the leap pad dvd's? There is the letter factory one, which does letters and sounds, then after that the word factory one which does cvc words. The third one does magic E and some other blends. There are probably more, but that's the 3 we have.

[4given]

A word of encouragement...I've heard of many children who didn't learn to read until age 9 or 10. Maybe they just weren't ready? Maybe some brain connections just needed time to mature? I'm not sure. Every child is different. Try not to loose heart. Just keep it fun. Maybe she is a little resistant because she senses that she is letting you down or something. By bucking the phonics instruction, she is able to avoid failure or feeling dumb. Just a thought.

[ncmom]

I wouldn't worry to much yet. My daughter was in 2nd grade last year and was 7/8 yrs old. She went in barely being able to read 3 letter words. I hated doing phonics with her, I felt like I was beating my head on a wall. Skip to the end of the school year, she left 2nd grade reading everything she could get her hands on. It just clicked one day and she got it. Now, not even a year later, she reads well above her grade level and loves it. Just be patient. I did a lot of computer programs with my daughter. She just couldn't see it on paper, but let her do it on the computer and hear it and she loved it.
One of the ones she liked was study dog. It was free I don't know if it still is or not. I believe the web site is simply www.studydog.com. Good luck!

[Theodore]

[seekingmyLord]

I just received this week's "The Homeschool Minute" newsletter. There are short--I mean short--articles written on this very subject, "Encouraging a Love for Reading," by different contributors. Opinions range, but the general consensus is that some children just don't like to read, although like being read to. Generally, there are just other things the child would rather do when given the choice. Some children prefer being active or creative or exploring with their minds in other ways. One suggested to unplug the TV--which I have to say, if they are not watching TV or playing a game on the computer, what else would they use for entertainment? (We watch TV less than most families we know.)

Ruth Beechick, who contributes to the newsletter, suggested a book by Mark B. Thogmartin called Teach a Child to Read with Children's Books. "Thogmartin's system helps children love reading right from the start by using real reading, not an academically engineered sequence of sounds and rules and drills that eventually lead up to reading.... Good books for this are the "predictable" kind, those with such a pattern that a child can predict most of the next line. Some are predictable by repetition like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, some by cumulativity like Old MacDonald Had a Farm, some by rhythm and rhyme. Thogmartin suggests numerous techniques for this gradual shift from you reading to the child reading. Pause for the child to fill in a word, or he pauses and you fill in the unknown words. Point word by word as you read. Notice letters. Brown and bear begin with b like your name Bob or Betty. Notice beginning consonants a lot and other letters as need arises. Plenty of phonics is in this system but it is integrated with real reading."

I have not read the book myself, but I used the same techniques when I was reading to my daughter. However, I admit that my daughter loved books and reading from the start. She was reading at three. We did not put emphasis on phonics as much as reading itself and we used "Teach Your Child in 100 Easy Lessons." To this day, I have never really used a "phonics program" for her to learn how to read (although we are using phonics rules for spelling now), but she did learn the technique of sounding out with 100EZLessons. I have learned that her motivation is in the doing of a thing more than in the learning the mechanics in how to do a thing.

[momo3boys]

My oldest hated to read, we pushed him and pushed him and labeled him with a LD, then one day, when he school was out and we weren't pushing him and more, he started reading! It literally happened in a moment. He was 9 1/2! He went from struggling with "it" and "the" to reading "grasshopper" and "because"! I stopped pushing and he was ready. I really think that when we push our children to the conforms of what the school expects them to learn when we are doing a great disservice to them. If i had let him learn on his own, and just kept reading to him and showing him how, Without Pushing, I think he would have learned earlier, Maybe not. Either way, he learned and now he likes to read. I just needed to wait until he was ready and stop worrying about it.

I hope this helps.

[Jshersh71]