Although this will be brief because it is already past my bedtime and my brain is fried, I have been feeling that maternal guilt associated with not giving my children equal blog-time.     DS4 is the one that keeps saying such funny things lately, I could write an entry just about him every day.  And I wrote recently about DD8, so now I need to write about DS6 and DD2.  For tonight, a brief entry about DS6's reading progress will have to suffice.  I'm not sure this will even count as the Cliff's Notes version, but here goes:   

DS6 has improved tremendously in his reading over the past few months.  He has learned 68 out of 71 of the Orton-Gillingham phonograms, so he has most of the "code" that he needs in order to "crack" English words.  For a while, the poor guy was about driven crazy by the fact that the same letter can make multiple sounds, and the same sound can be produced by more than one letter (or sets of letters), but finally he came to terms with the facts and began progressing nicely.

Formally, we are working through a set of A Beka readers, but he also enjoys deciphering other things.  He read a few verses of the Bible to his dad, and he likes to try to read other things for school that I typically read.  For example, he started wanting to read his daily poem.  To a certain extent, I let him because I certainly don't want to quench his enthusiasm, but I usually have to limit him to a few sentences in order to avoid taking time we need for  other subjects.  He is picking up speed, though, and his comprehension actually seems to be better when he reads than when I read to him.

It is so exciting to see a child, especially your own child that you are teaching, learn how to read.