Friday, April 29, 2016
Treading Water
I don't think that there has been much of a significant change since the last time I posted two weeks ago. I worked a week of nights and so I wasn't able to do as much reading with my son. He's still in this phase where he can sound out individual words when asked, but doesn't really have a large memorized sight word vocabulary. Sometimes it is a struggle to get him to read what the books actually say rather than what he is guessing them to say. To help with this, I'm trying have him focus more on pointing to each word as he reads it so that he has to register. I haven't done the flash cards for over a month now. I made an excel sheet to record the number of "memorized" sight words he knows because I thought it might be fun to look back at it someday. So far, it's been a plateau.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Back in Seattle
Our time in Yakima was fun, though not as productive for me as I would like. The difference in location and the proximity of Grandma's house with the allure of the trampoline and my old toys made nap time a struggle. Unfortunately, nap time is key to my overall sanity and ability to work on projects. On the other hand, since we've been back in Seattle I have actually made it a habit of having him put himself to sleep and it has never been easier (the key has been to use ask him if he wants a dim light on or totally off, and he puts himself to bed now without any issues).
Potty training is now pretty much complete, and I have been looking at preschools now to try and get him more social interaction with other kids (will probably write more on this later). It seems that for at least Montessori schools in this area, things seem to be pretty competitive, and it looks like I missed the boat for getting considered for admission by several months (some schools have stop accepting applications in January 2016 for the 2016-17 school year!).
With regards to reading there has been some progress! About 3-4 nights ago he started to read books completely by himself (Bob Books, specifically the first couple books 'Mat', 'Sam', and 'Dot'). Yesterday he also read a short story from an old 80s phonic learner as well by himself. There was a large plateau period where he wouldn't read by himself and everything felt like pulling teeth so I was worried I was just pushing him and ruining reading for him but then there were a couple changes on my end that I think made the difference.
The first was getting him to point at the words. For some reason I never thought that this was important until about a week ago. I started asking him to point to the words as I read them and I think this helped him "put it all together", because for the longest time he could sound out words when asked but would just stare at a sentence and would rarely jump to the next word. Another trick was then having him point to the words but I would read it. This helped me slow him down when he would skip over words or just jump lines. Finally, one night he didn't want to go to bed so I allowed him to delay sleeping if he read me the books, which he did quite well. Since then most of his independent reading continues to be done when he is just trying to delay going to bed (that is, he still doesn't pick up a book 'for fun' and try reading it), but yesterday he wanted to read by himself while we were reading for fun I think things are trending in the right direction.
I have pretty much stopped using the "Flesch Cards" except when we play "Munchkin". Munchkin is a Steve Jackson card game that is a satire on D&D. We have come up with a morphed version of it that involves going through a dungeon, encountering monsters or good guys and fighting the monsters by rolling a die and counting it (and then the game further morphed into that number being how many cards he needs to read in order to defeat the monster). Honestly, I probably overdid the cards and he has never really caught on to them. We have never done more than the first three sets.
As an aside while doing some spring cleaning I found a LeapPad that my grandmother gave us that I hadn't used yet because I was prejudiced against it. I cleaned it up and we started trying it yesterday and actually the modules that we have for it are right at the level I want for him (things like CVC words, vowel sounds). He really likes it and can actually set it up himself although the thing is buggy and occasionally wonks out. He's already learned the old NES trick of blowing in the cartridge and reinserting it.
Potty training is now pretty much complete, and I have been looking at preschools now to try and get him more social interaction with other kids (will probably write more on this later). It seems that for at least Montessori schools in this area, things seem to be pretty competitive, and it looks like I missed the boat for getting considered for admission by several months (some schools have stop accepting applications in January 2016 for the 2016-17 school year!).
With regards to reading there has been some progress! About 3-4 nights ago he started to read books completely by himself (Bob Books, specifically the first couple books 'Mat', 'Sam', and 'Dot'). Yesterday he also read a short story from an old 80s phonic learner as well by himself. There was a large plateau period where he wouldn't read by himself and everything felt like pulling teeth so I was worried I was just pushing him and ruining reading for him but then there were a couple changes on my end that I think made the difference.
The first was getting him to point at the words. For some reason I never thought that this was important until about a week ago. I started asking him to point to the words as I read them and I think this helped him "put it all together", because for the longest time he could sound out words when asked but would just stare at a sentence and would rarely jump to the next word. Another trick was then having him point to the words but I would read it. This helped me slow him down when he would skip over words or just jump lines. Finally, one night he didn't want to go to bed so I allowed him to delay sleeping if he read me the books, which he did quite well. Since then most of his independent reading continues to be done when he is just trying to delay going to bed (that is, he still doesn't pick up a book 'for fun' and try reading it), but yesterday he wanted to read by himself while we were reading for fun I think things are trending in the right direction.
I have pretty much stopped using the "Flesch Cards" except when we play "Munchkin". Munchkin is a Steve Jackson card game that is a satire on D&D. We have come up with a morphed version of it that involves going through a dungeon, encountering monsters or good guys and fighting the monsters by rolling a die and counting it (and then the game further morphed into that number being how many cards he needs to read in order to defeat the monster). Honestly, I probably overdid the cards and he has never really caught on to them. We have never done more than the first three sets.
As an aside while doing some spring cleaning I found a LeapPad that my grandmother gave us that I hadn't used yet because I was prejudiced against it. I cleaned it up and we started trying it yesterday and actually the modules that we have for it are right at the level I want for him (things like CVC words, vowel sounds). He really likes it and can actually set it up himself although the thing is buggy and occasionally wonks out. He's already learned the old NES trick of blowing in the cartridge and reinserting it.
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