Summer Reading

My main focus with Millie this summer is reading - well, when we are not outside playing baseball and basketball. My mom got her a box of 'Sight Words' and we are flying through them. We started with all of the 1, 2, and 3 letter words. When she knew all of them, we started to add 2 new words every night. She now only has a few cards left and she will know the entire stack of 110 words

In addition to the flash cards, we also do a beginner reader book every night. This is a little more difficult for me because she memorizes a book after about the third time we read it together. So, I had to stop buying the books and now we go to the library every week and get new books. That way she has to actually read the words in the book and not just recite it from memory. When we do these books, she usually reads about 50% of it and I help her with the words she has not learned yet.

This whole process has made me realize that I think learning to read is one of the most difficult things a person masters in life. Only about 1% (Yes, I made up this statistic) are read the way they sound. I am very proud of Millie and how well she is doing. Every night when we finish her flash cards or read a book, she gets to add a sticker to her reading chart. There are about 90 squares and when it is all full, she gets a swing set. Rick better start designing it because she will earn it in about 6 or 7 more weeks.

My goal is for her to know all of her Dolch words by the end of the summer. According to all the reading websites out there, when a child knows the Dolch words, they are considered a reader. All sites I have looked at are different but there are between 220-400 Dolch words. I can not find an official Dolch list but we are shooting for the 400 word list.