Meal Time Sentences

Our lovely flash cards that we DO use!!

          

            I am not a very good teacher.  I should be going over letters and numbers every single day with Ellyanna, but I’m not.  I should be teaching her how to trace and write them out, but of course I’m not.  I save it all for preschool, which is only two days a week.  I’m far from perfect.  But I am taking little steps.  I do something small every day, something I like to call meal time sentences. 

            What are meal time sentences?  Let me back track here.  A couple of years ago we bought “Your Baby Can Read” because I just had to have it and insisted that our daughters would be becomes real life geniuses in result.  Of course being the mom that I am, I was gung ho for the first couple of weeks and then easily stopped.  “Your Baby Can Read” comes with videos, which we placed in the car DVD.  Ellyanna grew sick of it quickly.  A lot of whining sounded once the theme song to these DVD started.   But Brinley loved it, so we would take turns for a bit there.   And then Brinley broke her TV screen.  She was fascinated with yanking on the wires, and kicking at the screen, now they don’t work.  The DVD’s made their way inside and I attempted to play them once a day.  But the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Ellyanna was so frustrating that eventually it dwindled down to once a week, and really we are now at about once a month.

Side note: As inconsistent as I was, it really did work!!!!!

one of the videos we hardly ever watch

            The point of this long winded story is that “Your Baby Can Read” also comes with flash cards that show pictures and the word associated with that picture.  And the flashcards is something that I have been better about sticking with.  Every day we go over a couple of words.  Then I write out sentences with those words on out.  It takes just a couple minutes during lunch and dinner.  The outcome?  Well the outcome is that Ellyanna recognizes and understands these words:

The-as-is-up-looking-smiling- boy- and- rattle-moon-looks

 AND can read these sentences:

“The boy is looking up at the moon.”

“The boy is smiling”                                                    

“The boy looks up at the moon” 

            I can commit to small changes.  Small commitments are very doable, which is why this one has been so successful and much easier.  It gets easier every day when I see how much progress she is making.  My little girl is really learning how to read!!!  Bit by bit, I hope in a years’ time we can announce that Ellyanna is a proficient reader.  Any tips for me?  What do you do to teach yours kids?  How do you teach them to read?  Any tips are wonderful!!

My lovely taping job to the fridge so we remember to practice!!