I'm feeling so frustrated this morning I had to walk away from the table for a minute.  I still have that nasty cold, so everything is shrowded by my miserable sinus headache. I should take something, but since I'm still nursing, I'm not sure what I can take.  BUT, I'm frustrated w/ James right now.  He just doesn't "Get" his reading.  There are certain words called "sight words" that we've been working on since August and he STILL doesn't get them.  I told him it says "they" and had him repeat it while looking at the word a few times...  then went back not a minute later and asked him what it said and he said "I don't remember"  He does that w/ most of his sight words... and a lot of letter sounds "sh", "pl", "qu", etc.  Maybe I'm expecting too much out of a 5 y/o??  I have an issue where I HATE repeating myself...  I've heard introverts hate repeating themselves, so that would probably explain that.  So when I have to repeat over and over and over it's like banging my head against a brick wall and it drives me crazy.

Ok...  calmed down... ready to move on.  I think we'll start over.  It doesn't help that from the moment he woke up this morning he was complaining about having to do school. *sigh*  He always does this if we take an unexpected day off (yesterday I had to drive DH into work and then piano lessons... it made it so we had no time to do school) I'm dreading starting school again after Christmas Break... maybe we won't take a break except for on Christmas day.  I'll have to think on that a bit....

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Posted by Anonymous

I am having this exact same problem today....well since the begining of the year. It has improved some with Marci, but since the 3 day break last week, it has magnified itself once again. Only Marci is doing great with her sight words this week (here and are) but can seem to read 'man' or 'tag' to save her life! I find it so frustrating at times....I too, think it would less painful for me just to bang my head on a brick wall. I am trying to remember what I read somewhere...."some children can read a word once or twice and it is forever ingrained in their memory, however, some children may need to read it 100 times or more before it finally 'sticks'. Regardless of how many times a child has to read a word, when they are mentally ready....it will stick and then things will start clicking for them" My problem is having the patience to wait on that 'sticking' moment!! You know it is bad, when every morning in your devotions, you find yourself praying that today will be the 'sticking' day. Now I will start praying for you to that you will experience a 'sticking' day too! Hang in there...you aren't alone in this frustrating time....you are doing a great job schooling your kids....he will get it...it just may take a bit longer than planned. My cousin's 3rd grader is just starting to experience the 'sticking'. I have slowed Marci's reading lessons down...and am taking 2 weeks per lesson instead of 1. I don't want to rush her and then have to repeat it all later or make her hate school.

I hope you feel better soon, drink something hot and take a hot soak in the tub if you can. Try not to let it get to you too much. I have faith in your ability to teach him.

~ hugs and prayers......Charlotte

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Posted by Vegiemama

My dd, now 10 and a hugely avid reader, did exactly the same thing when she was a beginning reader! She had to sound out every single word, even if a word had appeared twice already in the sentence. Ouch, that was painful. It took her forever to remember a sight word. I had to get over my impatience and just let her go at her pace. I did a lot of what I now know is called "Shadow Reading" with her, where I actually spoke the difficult word as I was pointing to it, just before she was ready to start trying to sound it out. I think when I started doing that, was when she turned the corner and started doing better--probably because she wasn't so nervous or afraid that she might make a mistake!

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Posted by emmaus

I don't know if you do DVDs but I have my 5yo reading because of a little DVD called Leap Frog Letter Factory. It is just amazing. I think you can get one at Wal-Mart or Costco for under 10 dollars. Hope it helps. He is my 7th student and none of htem picked it up this fast and has retained hte info for over a year without really seeing the DVD more than a couple of times in the last year.

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