Trying Something New

 The other day at Friday Fun Class, a group of us got into a conversation about this book, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Phyllis Haddoz and Elaine Bruner. Several of the moms said they had used the program with their older kids, and my friend Wynter said she was using it right now with her 4 year old, and they are almost done and having a lot of success. I actually have this book sitting on my shelf right now. Lisa, my sister-in-law, lent it to me a year or so ago. I just had never opened it. Anyways, the conversation at FFC class made me curious, so I went home and read the introduction. It's a little bit different sounding at first, but once I'd read it all, the method made sense to me. What I like very much about it, is that it takes zero preparation on my part every day because they have it all scripted out for me. And it's only 15-20 minutes every day. That I can do.


So I think Lincoln and I are going to give it a try. The first few lessons teach letter sounds, and even though Linc is far beyond that, we are still going to start at the beginning and do every lesson, so the he can learn the style they are teaching it, so that when the lessons do start to get harder, he understands what it is they are asking him to do. Supposedly, by the end of 100 lessons, Lincoln will be reading at a second grade level. Cool. I don't really care that much if he's at a second grade level or not, but I would really like him to have a very sound understanding of phonics, and I think this book will do that. I'll let you know how it goes.

In order to track our progress and make it fun, we made a paper chain. Every day after we do his reading lesson, Lincoln gets to pull a link off the chain. He's all about this kind of thing. We did one for Christmas, and as soon as Christmas was over he asked me if we could make a chain to count down to this birthday, which is in August. I said no. But this made him happy. :)