learning to read

I still really don't know what approach I want to take as for Butterfly and learning how to read. On one hand I do love the idea of letting her teach herself at her own pace, when and how it fits her. On the other hand, all those posts I read (mainly for the art stuff for kids they have) where they show these wonderful things they do with young toddlers to teach them letters! (plus I do fear, people [especially my mother] will see that Butterfly is 'not advancing in her reading' and will push teaching on to her [they already think that homeschooling is wrong..).

Anyway, while I continue to ponder on the issue, I would like to tell you about our little advancements in the literacy world. It started some time ago (maybe a month or two ago? don't really remember..) when I opened a book to read to Butterfly and, as this was a book that I bought her, plus pages from paper and not board or plastic, I had [once, many moons ago] written her name on the inner side of the binding. So I open the book, see her name written, and mention to her that this is your name. I had no intentions in doing so, but ever since she's been asking me many times to write down her name (in fact, every time she sees me with a pen in my hand..), sometimes pointing at letters and either telling me or asking me if it's her name written there. And no, mostly it is not her name that is written, but I am very happy for her recognition of these being letters [just reminding you that she doesn't even know the ABC song, let alone letters etc] that are read into something.

In the last couple of days she started asking me once or twice - what is written here? Noticing letters all around her and wanting to know, to learn. It does make me happy to know that even if I'm not too sure what is our path as regard reading, that nevertheless, we are on the right one!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now to a little rant in the same subject of learning to read. As I've mentioned, one of my fears is my mother. My mother is very old class - she is the teacher, so she is the one with the knowledge  and her job is to pour that knowledge onto her pupils. She teaches my almost 6 year old niece to read and write in English [The girl is in last year of kindergarten and will start school (1st grade) next year*]. My mother has a few workbooks that she uses in the lesson, jumping from one to another. The girl on the other hand, you can feel that she is not too enthusiastic about it, she wants and she doesn't want (more doesn't). And I can see from the side how it's a lot of "school work" and not really anything else. A kid that age needs much more, because learning from books can get really boring. So I quickly googled up and found some sites with ideas for her, like preparing very big outlined words, and the girl has to glue  sweets or cheerios etc on them - fun, tactile, yummy; or another idea I really liked was preparing cloth pegs each with a letter  on it, as well as word cards, and the girl has to go through the pile of pegs searching for the right letters for her word - again fun, tactile, active. So I send my mother the list, trying to gently tell her the girl needs a bit more in the lesson. My mother's response? "some of the sites require paying, others aren't suitable" and she went on to print a bingo game which is the nearest thing that was to what she was doing so far (child reading from a worksheet, so called a game). Errrrrr!

[as for her claim - a big err as she completely didn't get my message! I was just sending her ideas she might want to try, not what she should teach or sites to print from]

* In school of course she will be learning to read and write in Hebrew, my mother is just giving her an enrichment..

P.S
That Bingo game - had my mother just printed the paper and the rest (gluing onto construction paper and then cutting out the grid itself and the words to be put on the grid) left for the lesson - that would have been something else!!