Recently, the Kindergartener has started bringing home short homework assignments to build upon the new skills they are working on at school in language arts and math. For the most part, these are one page assignments that take only a matter of minutes to finish. But, they’ve also started learning phonetics and are beginning to read.
Heaven help us.
I’ve long known that I don’t have the patience or stamina or teaching skills necessary to homeschool my children. And, I’ll admit it… I’ve not ever had the desire to do so.
But, if ever I needed confirmation that it wouldn’t work for us, these beginner reading books have provided just that. Specifically, the phonetics part.
I would lose my mind. And, my children would continuously feel defeated and discouraged.
The other night we were supposed to read through this little book, Blue or Green.
The way it works, I read the blue words, and the Kindergartener does her part by reading the black words. Some of these words she is learning to read phonetically, and a few of them are what we call “sight words,” meaning she is learning to simply recognize them without actually sounding them out.
The problem is I’m a terrible teacher.
“The” is a sight word. And, the sweet Kindergartener has mastered it now, but last week “the” was not on her radar. Hence, the circles you’ll see hastily drawn around “the” on the above page. I thought we’d never make it through “the” book. I just kept circling and circling and working us both up into a huge mess.
I told the Spouse when I {finally!} came back downstairs after our reading time, “I just want to yell, ‘It’s the! It’s the! It’s the, t-h-e, THE!!!”
And, that’s kind of missing “the” point, don’t you think?
Once we get through these books and my blood pressure returns to normal, I’m totally ashamed of myself and my impatience. The Kindergartener is doing great, and I stand in total awe of how in only a matter of weeks, a teacher can take a group of young children and have them sounding words out and beginning to read. When she gets through several words at a time and makes a sentence, the Kindergartener’s blue eyes sparkle with pride. Really, it’s an amazing thing to witness your child learn a skill they will use every day, at every turn, forever.
So, hopefully, I can keep the beauty of the discovery of reading in mind as we continue to work on phonetics and sight words in the coming weeks and months.
Not that it’s a viable excuse, but I think part of my impatience problem might stem from the fact that a certain someone spends her days {from dawn till well past dusk} doing very mischievous, if not outright dangerous, things. And, by the time we get around to reading our beginning reader books, I’m a bit frazzled.
Yesterday, the Baby made her own version of alphabet soup using some of the Toddler’s wooden puzzle pieces:
The fact that this was a peg puzzle made for a much easier retrieval of our letter “T.”
And, in other antics… Sadly, even our beloved Minnie Mouse is no longer safe in this house.
So, now I need more patience in the teaching department, AND I need a miracle for Minnie before the Toddler realizes her head is loose.
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