My six year old has been a very reluctant reader. She has wanted to avoid trying to read books in favor of reading a page or two from the McGuffey's Eclectic Primer or Reading Pathways. She has been slogging through Explode the Code Phonics and learning the 70 phonograms from the Spell to Read and Write curriculum. We play all kinds of games in order to learn sight words: we break apart poems and put them back together, She get's to erase words off the white board as she reads them aloud. She catches a beach ball with sight words all around it and reads one each time she catches it etc.
Finally today she decided to read to me. She read several pages of Dr. Seuss' Ten Apples Up On Top and then all of Old Hat New Hat and a few pages of P.D. Eastman's Are You My Mother. Interspersed with this I also read 6 books/stories to her. I think she was especially motivated since we got a box of books from a friend who is moving. Earlier today I put together a box of books that are fairly easy to read and left it in her room. At the time she was trying to read a Mo Willems book aloud to her dolls and asked me to help her. I am so glad she is taking an interest in reading.
Mental note to self: continue reading lots of fun books aloud.
