Some Home School days...

are hard.

and challenging.

and frustrating.

That was yesterday.

Monkey is learning to read.

At a VERY. SLOW. PACE.

I have no experience with this. This is what I know:

A-Dog:
A-Dog was half way done with Kinder (6 yrs old) when we realized that they had no intention of teaching him to read.  It was eye opening, but he was our first experiment child. So, I bought a set of popular learn to read books and taught him in about a week. He really struggled emotionally with school and separation. I think he was in 2nd grade before I could leave him at school without tears. So, academically, I never pushed...until I realized he should probably learn to read.  

Although, then I could no longer say things like "oh, no, shucks, McDonald's is CLOSED!!  See? It says CLOSED...rats...sorry, next time".  Not that I would, but if I wanted to, I couldn't because he learned to read quite quickly with little help from us (and is a straight A student with High School Honors classes).

Agent P:
Agent P would start Kinder when he was only 5 and 2 months, so he was shuffled off to pre-school when he was 4.5. We thought he should experience something in his life that didn't revolve around his younger twin siblings. It was not easy being Agent P during the twins first 3 years, let's face it, it was not easy being ME either :).  

Week 2 of preschool I got 'the call'. 

It was mostly panic and that gut feeling of 'oh, geez, I knew he was going to get himself in trouble in preschool.' Because while I love him dearly, at age 4.5, I feared he was ready to turn the corner into downright...well naughty.  And probably deprived of attention.

Luckily, she was only calling to ask me if I knew that he knew 40 sight words.

I had no clue. 

Remember, at this time, I was still trying to get thru each day with some sort of sanity at the end. I was happy he knew his name and how to dress himself. I was up for all sorts of Mom of The Year awards, obviously.

Apparently he knew all 100 sight words through Kinder and well into 1st grade. Who knew?  From there he just read books of all kinds, could decipher words that even didn't make phonic sense. 

Mini P:
This girl has always, always, always loved books. Loved to be read to, loved to pretend to read...loved workbooks, coloring and anything resembling school.  By 2 she could identify all letters upper and lower case. Not because I taught her mind you, remember, at this point I was still hoping to shower each day...and remember to do laundry.

So, when she taught herself to read before she turned 4, I wasn't surprised but I certainly didn't encourage it :)  She would say "what does this spell?" And then spell a word while I was driving. Have you ever tried to mentally spell a word when someone spells a word out loud to you? And have you ever had to figure out what they meant when they started over mid-way because they messed up?  Made my head spin.  But, that is how she learned to read.  At 5, she reads at a 2nd grade level, full comprehension. If she doesn't know what a word means, she usually will ask.

Monkey:
Oh Monkey. How I adore this sweet, good natured boy. He is what we call our 'observer'.  He notices things that no one else does. He points out things about trucks and cars, like 'that truck has wheels like Dad's truck', or 'that truck is just like Grandpa's except" blah blah blah.  He would rather watch than participate and he absolutely loves watching the navigation arrow on my new truck that shows where we are going.

He can put legos together like no one's business. He studies the directions and is very good at coming up with his own creations that are actually quite well done. He has even brought it to my attention that I messed up one of the truck I put together for him.

But he can barely recall any words he has learned. He knows about 6 sight words (after 4 weeks) and has completed about 5 lessons in Phonics (which is about 4 ending sounds).  I can't go any further because he hasn't mastered them yet. He sees them in his Phonics book and says them, but looking at a flashcard he can't always identify them. Or if he does, it isn't quickly.

I'm not talking hard words. 

I'm talking about: and, he, on, or, no, the, mat, cat, pig, cap, tap...

He tries so hard. He wants to do it.

His brain just doesn't cooperate.

It's just not his thing.

And it is very hard on me too. It tries every (im) patient cell in my body to help him with the same word over and over and over and over. No matter how simple I think it is, it isn't for him.  I don't mean to be impatient and I rarely let it show...

But sometimes I have to just end the teaching...

So I don't scream.

Or yell at the top of my lungs "BAT! The word is BAT!!"   :)

So, today is Friday and we don't do school on Friday (unless Agent P hasn't finished something). 

Thank goodness for me.  

Cheers!