Off the Bandwagon, Again

I don't know why I keep doing this to myself, I feel sure that YOU too are tired of hearing about it, but Hannah does not want to learn to read.  She refuses to look at the pages.  But today, we did work on handwriting with copy work.  She makes great letters and copies very well.  I also wrote some three letter words for her to draw and then we turned it into a book.  I also made a word scramble where she took the letters at the top and followed the lines to put the letters in the right order.  It was her name.
Later today, I think we are going to read how to make Apple Pie and see the world.

My Hero

We went shopping today after breakfast with the ladies.  We headed to Target and picked up Hannah a new pair of Sunday shoes.  She LOVES them! And then we picked up a new book, Bolt's My Hero.  She let me sound it all out for her, I'm hoping that by reading more slowly it will help her pick up on the letter sounds. 

Repetition

Repeating the story over and over is one of the concepts of FIAR.  So today, as we were reading Lentil, I decided to just reinforce onomatopoeia.  There are a lot of really good words in the story line, like slurp and shlursh.  Good stuff.  We were also gifted with some phoenic books from a friend that feature Scooby Doo.  We've been having fun reading those the last day.  And in some of them, I say the sound purposefully wrong, for instance ch I say cuh huh instead of the chuh sound.  or suh huh instead of shh.

Lentil

For some reason Lentil makes me think of Yentl.  Go figure!  It was a fun book to read. We like McCloskey so that always gives a book a leg up. 
We went with the Social Studies lesson today and found Ohio on the map of the USA.  We're also watching the Learn to Read with Phonics dvd that we got from Netflix. 
Hannah still frustrates me to no end in regards to reading.  I guess I'm still not ready for her to learn at her own pace, which means that I should probably hold off a few more months. 

A trip to the library

Joel needed the house to himself for an hour or two and I needed to turn in some library books so you know where we went, right?  We were able to pick up Lentil, How to Make an Apple Pie and The Night of the Moonjellies.  So we are pretty much set to work through the end of the month.  And unfortunately, that will probably get us to the end of our FIAR volume 1.  I'm still torn as to whether we will move on to volume 2 or to venture into a self created curriculum or purchase something that will be more geared towards first grade. 

I did get a first from Hannah today.  I told her that a DVD was coming in the mail that would teach her how to read and asked her if she wanted to learn how to read.  She said "yes" and that is the very first time that she has been agreeable to the option.  I did not buy one of those DVD sets off the the television, I merely rented one that was on Netflix and have no idea if it's any good or not.  I guess we'll find out tomorrow or Monday.   

Mixing Things Up

The science lesson for today is mixtures!  So we mixed up some pudding and for lunch I think we'll mix up some soup maybe with noodles like Giovanni had in The Clown of God . We also souped up the science lesson by talking about how rainbows are formed.  The simplified version of sun plus rain equals rainbow.  I might throw in the story of Noah later today to round out the whole rainbow mixture theme.
We have Midweek Mania starting tonight.  I hope that Hannah really enjoys herself.  She really moved straight out of the nursery and into the fast lane!
I purchased Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons awhile back and it was packed away during our move.  I found it again the other day and we started it two days ago.  Hannah HATES it, but I'm making her do it anyway.  She does love drawing her letters on Joel's Ipod Touch Whiteboard (free app), so that's how I get her involved. 
I don't think I expected as much of the "I don't want to do school" as I have been getting the last couple of days.  It's our third week, and I imagined that she would be over that at this point, but instead I have to be the mom and tell her we're doing it anyway.