he can read!

I just started "phonics" as we call it with L this week ("reading" is on the schedule, meaning me reading aloud to him.)  He knew all his letter sounds really well already, thanks to the Leapfrog videos and listening to Z learn how to read.  The first thing he said when we sat down with our magnetic letters was, "Don't do 'cat' Mom, 'cause I already know that."  Sure enough, he knew that one and was able to easily blend many more CVC words.  So right now my job's pretty easy and L is pretty enthusiastic.  

I decided not to do Sing, Spell, Read, & Write with L like I did with Z.  Although it was a fun program, if I went through it again I would leave so much out, including the handwriting since we're using another program, and workbooks that review letter sounds (Z was pretty bored after a few days of letter sounds that she already knew), that I didn't think it would be worth it. So I got Ruth Beechick's litte $4 book called Home Start in Reading that gives the nuts and bolts of teaching children to read.  I also used Paperbackswap to collect together some McGuffey Eclectic Readers and I'm waiting for my Teacher's Guide (also written by Ruth Beechick) so that I have some lesson plans to go with them.  So hopefully that'll be all we need. So far so good, but we'll see.  And I always have the Sing Spell games that I can supplement with.  

No great pictures since the batteries in the camera are dead.  But we found the kids some used bikes and Z is finally learning how to ride one without training wheels.  So hopefully we'll snap some shots of that soon.  And that's about it for now!