Nevada Kids: 2008

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Making Doll Clothes

The little girls wanted to sew some doll clothes this week, so I told them when their school

was done and room was clean, we would. They picked out fabric, picked out a pattern, and helped cut and sew and choose lace. They had a blast. I love the picture of them after they

fell asleep with their dolls.

Thoughts on Teaching a Child to Read

For my friend Charlotte-and anyone else who is interested:

Here are my ideas on teaching a child to read, or supplementing what your child is getting in public school.

First of all, I start out by teaching them the ABC song-simple enough (can start right after birth, if you're in a hurry! hehe)

Then, I help them learn to recognize the letters and ***what sounds they make***(very important). I don't get anything fancy-usually just pick up a book at the thrift store that has good pictures and hopefully big letters. One of my favorites for that is this book (you can see it's been around the corner a time or two): I'm Reading!...all by myself. It starts out with the letters and a picture for each letter. I like to teach the short vowels first ( a as is cat, e as in hen, i as in Indian, o as in otter, u as in umbrella, and sometimes y (teaching the 3 sounds of y later).

I also like these little books from ABEKA BOOK. I purchased these on ebay, I believe. They start out very basic and only teach a couple of letters in each book.

As you can see from the pictures, they are very colorful and after teaching one letter, they will put a letter after it so they can start sounding out letters together. Of course, it would be fairly easy to make your own books or pages if you are so inclined.

Abeka also has this set that is more advanced-teaching the longs vowels too, and also comes in a book form, which I like, so that when I loose some of the booklets, as I have in this set, I still have it in the book. This was fun for the kids that used them.

Other things that have been helpful to me are (yes, I finally resorted to movies with the younger kids) letting the younger kids watch a video that I approve of that teaches the letters to help them with recognition-it also helps me to get school done with the older ones.

Another fun thing is to make a book or binder with one page for each letter of the alphabet. Then they can get magazines, sale papers, etc. and cut out pictures and glue them on the pages of the letter they start with. That's a fun one. They can also draw pictures on that page, or make things with yarn, stickers, etc. I remember one of the children had a big picture of an apple on the A page and they went around the apple in a spiral with red yarn and a zipper on the Z page. There are also coloring books, workbooks, flashcards, etc. that can be found at thrift stores, the dollar store, and Walmart, to name a few. Good luck!

Please leave a comment with your ideas and things that have worked for you, if you've taught a child to read. Thanks!