Teach Your Monster to Read

My 4 year old is on break from preschool and I've been trying to work with her on some reading skills and getting her used to the idea of homeschool (which she is really excited about).  She's a few lessons into Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  She loves it!  LM has always been my "independent reader".  She loves books.  She likes to "read" them all day every day.  When I read to her, I have to give her another book to hold or she'll interrupt me the whole time I'm reading.  Last year I read about a free website that works with beginning readers called Teach Your Monster to Read.  SM has already completed the 2 levels (we're hoping for more levels soon).  LM is half way through the second level now.

I like that it is free.  The girls love that they can create a monster and add accessories to it as they advance through the levels.  One fault that I have found is that the narrator is difficult to understand at times.  This makes some of the listening levels harder because it sounds like he's saying one sound but its actually a different one.

www.teachyourmonstertoread.com

 

Fancy Nancy Book Review

SM loves the Fancy Nancy books.  She has several of the picture books, but we recently discovered the I Can Read beginning readers.  SM loves that Nancy always dresses and talks "fancy".  I love that she uses "fancy" words and gives a definition in the story.  The bonus is that SM doesn't even realize that she is learning new words this way.  The end of each book has a glossary of Fancy Nancy's Fancy Words - which repeats each of the words in the story with the definition.
   

I had to use this book paired with her new smile!  She really enjoyed this book since she just recently lost another tooth.

What is SM Reading Now?

We followed the recommendations at the end of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  There is a series of books by Margaret Hillert.  SM loves the Dear Dragon series.  The repetitive nature of the book helps build her confidence and she enjoys each of them.  There are other book series available:  Easy Stories, Fairy Tales and Folklore, and Let's Play.  Most of the books are about 28 pages.  At the end there is a reading reinforcement section that covers phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and a word list.  I highly recommend finding these books at the library.  SM now likes to read a book at bedtime as well as during the day.  I had an awesome Mommy moment the other night:  she told me "Mommy, you were right, reading is fun!"  Isn't that what this is all about?
  

Teach Your Child to Read Review

  We are responsible for our own reading curriculum with Classical Conversations.  We used this for reading.  I'm not going to lie and say it was wonderful the whole time.  SM really enjoyed it at first.  At Lesson 74 the book took away the reading hints and SM had a complete meltdown.  After explaining that this was how other books would look she eventually got back to doing the lessons (although still with a fight).  The Lessons have a sound review, saying the words/sounds, rhyming section, reading sentences/stories, picture comprehension, word finding, and sounds writing.  We did not use the sounds writing section because I thought that would be too confusing since I was working with her on spelling and writing in other areas.  There were some Lessons that just seemed too long and we would split those days up.  At the end of the book there are recommendations for what to read next.  Now we go to the library and pick out leveled readers for her.  I've also added a few videos of SM reading from Lesson 100.