A Heart for God

The other month one of my favourite online Christian book shops had a sale and I bought a stack of books. That along with the Matt Challies 2017 Reading Challenge prompted me to purchase the book A Heart for God by Sinclair B. Ferguson. I was intrigued and wanted to read the book.  It is a short book 11 chapters and just 128 pages but packed with so many truths.

Here are some of my highlights from the book:

Chapter 5 is titled The Ever Present One, he talks about two questions that Moses asked, "Lord, who am I?" and "Lord, who are you?"These two questions define so much of what we should be asking, looking at ourselves and then looking and knowing who God is.

Chapter 9 is titled The Faithful Provider, one of the ways that we can look at the providence of God is through tracing it biographically and the example that is given is Joseph. "What his brothers did was genuinely significant--and hurt Joseph deeply. But Joseph had eyes to see that God was also at work, and that his purposes had been fulfilled not just in spite of his brothers, but even through their actions!" That is knowing God is at work through the actions of others.

Another example in this chapter was Naomi. I have to say that I have studied Ruth numerous times and heard various sermons but reading this chapter gave me some new insights. I also felt that the quote below was a good summary of lessons learned in Naomi's life.

"Naomi discovered this refuge under God's wants through some very dark experiences, and in situations which are difficult to understand. But when we place them in a large context, four lessons become clear. First, God's providences at times are painful and severe; second, through these experiences he may touch the lives of others; third, he brings us to an appreciation of his ways with us that we would otherwise lack; and fourth, he fulfils his purposes through us in way that far exceed our expectations."

Being reminded that at times God's providences are painful is good. I can easily come up with a list of painful times of life but through those need to remember that is working. He is the faithful provider.

The second to last chapter is the book is Let Us Worship God! A portion of the chapter looks at Psalm 92 and is broken down the tone basis, the blessings, the character and the fruit of true spiritual worship.

The last chapter is titled, Remember the Lord. We do so quickly forget and so we need to be reminded.

I found the book easy to read but one that I wanted to read slowly and ponder. It is short and one that I will plan to read again to be reminded of who God is and what he has done.

Beth

This is my own review based on the book I purchased.

Books on Prayer

One of my goals for this year was to read six books on prayer. I figure that is one book every two months. I want to read books that challenge me to pray more, give me new ideas on how to prayer, and deepen my prayer life.

I want to share these books with you as I read them this year.

The Bible - I will just include that in the list. I am reading through that this year.

Enjoy your prayer life by Michael Reeves - This is a short book and easy to read, just 46 pages.

"Prayer the chief exercise of faith" - John Calvin

"If prayer is 'the chief exercise of faith', then of course everything -- the world, the flesh and the devil -- conspires against prayer."

No wonder prayer is hard work.

"It is the word of God, the gracious message of Christ that awakens faith and so prayer -- and so that must be the basic shape of our everyday communion with God."


Praying the Bible by Donald S. Whitney - This is a nice small hardback book. In this book the author walks you through how to pray the Bible beginning with the problem with our prayers and how praying the Bible is the solution. He gives you a method to do this.

This book really spoke to me as this reflects some of my thoughts. I have wanted to get behind a "shopping list" or giving God a "to do list" prayers. Learning to pray the Bible helps us to speak God's words back to him, we see God's heart.

I have a few more on the stack and I will share with you when I finish reading them.

Beth

MaxScholar - TOS Review

I consider reading to be a fundamental skill in our learning. At times I find it more challenging to work on this as the student gets older. I was excited to have an opportunity for J to review MaxScholar Reading Intervention Programs from MaxScholar. We reviewed the MaxGuru portion of the program.


MaxScholar is a comprehensive, multi-sensory, reading and language-based program. This is an online program focusing on learning to read or improving reading. MaxScholar states that the program can improve grade levels in just 30 hours.

We received a one year license for this program. J was the primary user for this review. He is a good reader but I was interested in how this would improve his reading specifically looking at highlighting and gleaning the important information from the reading. We used MaxGuru and focused on  MaxReading which improves reading comprehension and introduces the concepts of highlighting, summarising, and outlining a text.

It was easy to set up a student account. I do like the fact that the student has their own account. J found it easy to login and do his work. There is also a teacher section. The one thing that I needed to remember was that this was a different web address for reports. There does not appear to be a link on the main website to the parents site. That is just one of the things that you need to remember. I did find the reports helpful especially as I just allowed J to work on this on his own. I was able to see what he has done and his scores.

At the beginning there is a pre-test. I am not sure if J didn't know exactly what was expected on the test but he scored a bit lower than I thought. That surprised me as the pre-test was about a place that he has visited, Hong Kong.

This was something that J was able to do on his own. I assigned it to be done three to four times a week. It took him about 20-30 minutes per lesson.


I asked his opinion and thoughts about MaxReading and this is some of what he had to say about the program.

"The layout is the best I have seen for an online program."

"The information was good with lots of different subjects."

"I learned stuff." 

I asked him how he thought it helped him and some of his comments were the following.

"I thought I was faster at reading and his comprehension was better."

"I learned to look for the important things when reading."

I"t helped to see what you need to know and remember."

"I learned to pull out the important parts."

One comment that he had just a fact that he observed, was that it was difficult to get an A+ and that was primarily because of the highlighting.

I think the program did what I thought it would do for J in helping him to learn to outline, summarise, and look for the important information. I think that is a skill necessary for university and further study.

There is much more to MaxScholar than just MaxReading. There is also MaxPhonics for teaching reading. Reviews for both programs can be found with the link below.



Beth

Logic of English Essentials - TOS Review

I love reading and consider reading to be an essential skill. Reading has been a big focus of Miss K's learning. Miss K and I have been spending the past few weeks working on reading skills while reviewing Essentials 2nd Edition from Logic of English.

Logic of English combines the science of reading with the joy of learning. The goal of Logic of English is to enable all people to read proficiently. This is designed to teach reading, writing, spelling, phonics and grammar in a logical manner. Logic of English is designed for all ages, abilities and learning styles.

Before receiving Logic of English I had heard a friend talk about this program. I was curious about the program. Reading is one of Miss K's strong skills but this is a still that we are continuing to develop. I was also at the point of wanting to work more on writing and spelling and I am always interested in what I can do to help with phonics.

For this review I received the following:

Essentials Teacher's Manual
Essentials Student workbook
Spelling Journal
Basic Phonogram Flash Cards
Spelling Rule Flash Cards
Grammar Rule Flash Cards
Advanced Phonogram Flash Cards
Phonogram Game Cards
Phonogram Game Tiles
Phonogram & Spelling Rule Quick Reference Chart
Spelling Analysis Card

I also received The Essentials Reader, The Essentials Reader Student Activity Book and The Essentials Reader Teacher's Guide as downloads. I printed the student activity book and wished I had printed all of them but some of that is my love for having a paper copy.

I was eager to receive this and I was tracking it waiting for it to arrive. I unpacked the box and began reading the Teacher's Guide. I do suggest that you have some time to just read and begin to understand the methods of teaching and also a bit of time to organise all the cards.

Essentials is designed for learners 7+. The first thing that Miss K and I did together was a Placement Test. Based on the results of the placement test there are pre-lessons that are to be done before beginning the lessons. I found this helpful as there were a few gaps that we just needed to review and learn. The placement test also determines which level to teach.

Logic of English teaches and uses terms that I did not learn until I was in grad school words like phoneme, phonograms, and morphemes. That is how English is broken down and how you find the logic.

The teacher's guide has a bit of a script for you to follow but also has information there for you to understand and be able to teach. There are teacher tips throughout the lesson. The lesson is divided into five days. I did find that I had to adjust that a bit just for us to keep Miss K engaged and working through the lesson. She is a slower student and we needed that. There are suggested games to play and activities. There are clear directions as to when to use the student workbook.

Grammar is taught right from lesson 1. I like the integrated approach. I wish we had used this a few years ago so we would learn grammar as we learn to read.

The Essentials Reader is designed to supplement for the older student struggling to read. It is scheduled to be done on day 4. This includes pre-reading, post-reading, and handwriting. Lesson 1 included a number of tongue twisters which required careful pronunciation of each phonogram. There is basically one lesson in here for each lesson in Essentials.

The first part of Lesson 1 was a review and teaching of phonograms. Miss K knows most of her sounds but has a few trouble sounds. This gave me an opportunity to work with her on those sounds. It was a bit of combining speech therapy with reading.

Just in the few weeks have we have used this I can see an improvement in spelling. Today Miss K said, "I know how to spell book" and she wrote it on her list of things to do. I am eager to see how much her spelling improves as we continue through the book.

I love when there are glimpses of how the child is learning. The other day Miss K was talking and said, "fast" and then she paused and sounded out each phonogram. She understood. This is helping her to slow down a bit in her speech which needs to happen.

Examples of Miss K's spelling.

Overall I have been very impressed with Logic of English Essentials for Miss K, a special needs learner. I felt that she was improving, she was confident, and progressing. There were some adaptions that were needed, slowing down a bit, circling rather than underlining, and adding a bit more review. Essentials is great for a special needs learner.

I am thankful for the opportunity we had to use this. I am excited to see how this has helped Miss K to progress.


Beth

Reading Kingdom - TOS Review

Reading is one of Miss K's strong subjects but at the same time I am always looking to strengthen that skill. I think she is an excellent sight word reader but I want to continue to see if we can improve her reading skills. Miss K enjoys working on the computer so I was thrilled to be given the chance to review Reading Kingdom Online from Reading Kingdom.


"The Reading Kingdom is a fun, easy-to-use online program that teachers children 4-10 years old how to read and write to a third grade level."

The Reading Kingdom was developed by Dr. Marion Blank, an expert in literacy and language. She is the author of the book, The Reading Remedy. She has taken her experience and developed Reading Kingdom.

We have used various websites, book, and programs through the years as we build Miss K's reading skills. What makes The Reading Kingdom different and unique? Dr. Blank says that, Phonics is just one skill of reading and yet that is often the skill we are working to build but in order there are other skills needed. Reading Kingdom works to build not only phonics or sounds but also sequencing, writing, meaning, grammar, and comprehension. This is causing me to pause and think about how much time we spend working on phonics. I might just need to spend more time on sight words.

Miss K used the iPad for the Reading Kingdom. The touch screen makes it so much easier for her than using the mouse which requires a bit more skill. The program is designed to work best with Chrome which meant we had to download that to the iPad for use with this.


The first thing that the student needs to do is an assessment or evaluation to see the level the child is at and where to begin them. There is a reminder to the parents or teacher not to help the child but that this is to demonstrate what the child knows. That was a good reminder but it was repeated a few too many times for me.

This is a program that teaches more than just reading. I was surprised how much spelling was involved. That is not a strong skill for Miss K. I know at times that frustrated her. In order to work on the spelling skill it required using the keyboard, which on the iPad was an on screen keyboard. If she delayed in responding or typed the wrong letter, the program would guide her to the correct letter. I don't think Miss K has done much on the keyboard and that was something big that she needed to learn. I think over the few weeks that we have used this she has improved.

It is recommended that Reading Kingdom be done at least four times a week. I can see the value of that. The program does track visits. I received emails telling me what levels Miss K has finished. She was working to get the points to go to the next level.

Reading Kingdom offers a 30 day free trial.



Beth

V is for Victory Drill

This blue book brings back my own memories of school. I remember using this and seeing how many words we could read in a minute.

Victory Drill Book is a book that is phonetic and is designed to help build speed in reading. I had it on my shelf didn't use it much with J. This year I am working to build both Miss K's phonics and her sight words. One of the things to help build the sight words is Victory Drill. You could also use it for a bit of phonics but I am just using it to build speed on sight words.

Each page has a theme -- the same vowel sound, the same ending, or same blends. There are review pages that will include words covered in the previous few pages. There are also pages with sentences.

The first few pages are easy words for Miss K. She is reading about 55 wpm which is what they suggest for a 2nd grader. I don't correct her words while she reads but do come back and review the words.

This has been a great resource along with sight words.

Have you ever used Victory Drill?



Beth

#abcbloggin

Teaching Reading to a child with Down Syndrome

Teaching reading is not one of my favourite home schooling tasks. While it is not one of my favourite ones, it is one that I feel is critical and one that we do spend quite a bit of time. This is a critical skill.

Here is an article on phonics vs. sight words. I thought this was interesting in two areas one if that fact that we have moved from an audio world to a visual world. I don't know if we are trained to listen and absorb as in the past. The other interesting bit is the digit span that is needed for learning phonics.

I began teaching Miss K sight words using the principles from Teach your Baby to Read by Glenn Dorman when she was about 11 months old. She needed that for the brain stimulation. We continued with sight words until she was about 6.

Then it came time to add phonics. As we got started, I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I am not sure what phonics she learned through that program. It is good in the sense that it is scripted so you know what to say. For Miss K it was good to work on speech. We had lots of cards that we used with that.

I wasn't ready to give up on phonics so we pulled out Scaredy Cat and have worked with that. There are parts of that program that is sticking. It has lots of hands-on activities which she enjoyed.

We are also using Classic Phonics from Memoria Press. This just has simple word lists. We are using it for review and reinforcement.

After about three years of teaching phonics, I really don't know if I would say she is sounding words out. If you ask her what sound a letter makes, she will give you the sound but to do it on her own and put the word together, I don't think so.

So the debate continues with phonics or sight words here with Miss K. Do we keep pushing phonics or just skip it and do sight words? At this point we are still doing both. I do think we need to add some activities to increase digit span.

I don't have the answer on how to teach reading. I am sharing some of what we have done and some of it has worked and some has not. In some ways it is try and see what happens, adjust, try again and see what is happens, push a bit, encourage, see improvement, keep going.

Here is a bit more that I wrote about teaching reading.


Beth

The Joys of Teaching Reading

A moment of joy in a parent's life is when their child learns to read. I agree it is an exciting thing to watch your child open a book, begin pointing at the with their little finger and slowly say the words on the paper telling the story stumbling along on some of the words. A world of books to read awaits her.

Those are moments full of joy but people forget to also tell you.

The joy of reading means that Miss K can read the menu which means I can no longer limit the options. You know the evening she is wearing her new white shirt and as the mom you decide that really spaghetti sauce on this shirt would not match so let's skip that option on the menu but since she can read she knows that spaghetti is on the menu.

The joy of reading means that Miss K can read "Animal Hospital" and then insist that her dog needs to go to the hospital. Ignore the fact that it is 9:30 at night and that her dog is a stuffed chihuahua.

The joy of reading means Miss K can read your shopping list and discover that you are buying candy for a Valentine treat.

Seriously, it is fun to sit and watch her open a book and start to read. I love the world that is open to her because she can read.

Beth

Weekly Wrap-up - November 15, 2013

My husband was out of town all week. He left in time to avoid all the germs we had which resulted in those of us here being sick and coughing all week. Being sick did put a damper on our week. I figure we got more school done than if they were going to school.

Bob is us Christian Kids Explore Physics and one of the activities was to make atomic models from Styrofoam balls or clay. We had some clay and so we made them.

Then the next day I made atomic model pancakes.

That was a special treat because we normal rotate between eggs and oatmeal. The kids said they tasted as good as Grandma's. One of grandma's specialties is pancakes. When we were growing up, we got plain pancakes once a week or so but now the grandkids get pancakes with chocolate chips.

That was part of trying to make school a bit more fun.

I can't say that this was our best week of school. We continued on and I think some weeks that is worth it.

I can't believe we are halfway through November already. In fact I didn't think that today was the 15th. I thought that was next week and so we went to swim team today and then realized that it is this week that Friday practice was moved to Saturday. We could have had a morning at home without an interruption. Oh well, we will go back tomorrow.

Miss K continues to ask for breaks. She also wants to do school backwards but I don't know what is backwards and forwards for her. I have a four week trial for Reading Eggs. She is enjoying that. I think some of the challenge is working on the trackpad on my computer. We will try it for four weeks and then decide.

Miss K's sight word reading is amazing. I just order 1,000 most commonly used words from Little Giant Steps. I want to spend some time this weekend reviewing this and putting a plan together on how we can use this.

I am thankful that we have another week next week. I want to spend some time this weekend planning. I had expectations of what Bob could do and I am needing to adjust them and do a bit of planning this weekend.

Bob has a piano recital tomorrow. I have a feeling that Miss K thinks she has one as well.

That wraps up this week.

Beth

Making Blends

As we got back into school this year, I decided that for Miss K we need to go back and review and just start at the beginning of Scaredy Cat Words. Four months of not working on that we needed to just go back and review.

Miss K has an extensive sight word reading list and we continue to build that but I am not ready to give up on teaching her some phonics.

Lesson 2 introduces ending word blends. To give her a bit of hands on we got out the blender.

I had her each of the letters for the blend on separate pieces of paper. Then she put them in the blender and pushed the button. Since the blender was not plugged in, it didn't really blend the paper but we did make some sound effects.

Then with a slight of the hand I took her cards out and added my card which had the blend together. The letters were blended.

We then made a post with the letters that she had written and my blend.

Here she is inspecting her work. Her tiara was slipping a bit.

That gave her an opportunity to blend her letters. Scaredy Cat has helped her to recognize her vowels and so we do have to remember that these letters do not have vowels and are not words.

We went through our list of words and matched them to the blend.

The hands on help gave some fun to our lesson.


Beth

Explode the Code

I don't exactly remember what prompted purchasing Explode the Code. I might have heard about it from other homeschool moms and based on that decided to get it. I started using it back when we adopted J and were learning English.

The Explode the Code series teaches basic phonics. The exercises in the book include matching, reading, spelling, copying and more. The illustrations are simple black and white drawings. I use these as a supplement, to give practice and build on the other reading and phonic activities that we are doing. There are parts of this that can be done on their own and I admit that I need that at times. I need Miss K to be able to do something while I am helping J with something.    

J has completed a number of these and at this point. I think he is done. It is easy for him but there are other things that he can and should be doing with his time.

I bought Get Ready, Get Set, and Go for the Code for Miss K. We worked on those over the past few years. At times when we started she wasn't ready and so we put them aside. She was able to finish these last year.  I will say this series is a good place to begin -- it works with beginning consonant sounds, writing the letters, and even has some pre-writing exercises. For this level you really do need the teacher's guide.

In the fall Miss K began Book 1. There were a few things that I needed to explain to her -- what is a pal, the fact that Nan is a girl's name. I was pleased with her work. She did a good job copying words, filling in the blanks. There were areas that she was to read a sentence and then pick which one matched the picture. This helped to reinforce what we were doing in other reading and phonics.

For her I have bought the 1/2 books. I just figure that the more practice it will just help to sink in a bit more. I do have the teacher's guides but have not used it for Book 1. It is decided so that the child is doing about 2 books a year. We are taking it at Miss K's pace so it might take longer.

I think this will be a good resource for her for years to come. I have bought these from either Christian Book or Rainbow Resources.

Beth

This is a resource that has been helpful. I have purchased these for our use. 

Stacks of Books

The other year I discovered the Classical Christian Education Support Loop's 1000 Great Books List. When we were in Pennsylvania, we read through as many as our library system there had on the 1-3 Picture books reading list. Now here in the NW we are seeing what books the library here has. We read through the books pictured above. Today we went to the library and got about 10 more. I love reserving the books online and just going in to pick up the books.

It is fun to read these good books. The list has introduced us to so many good books. We enjoyed Hilda the Hen Who Wouldn't Give Up, Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing, Amos and Boris, Andy and the Lion and many others.

I think we might have read all but about 20 on the list.

J is slowly working his way through the either through his own reading or through books that I read aloud.

This list has been helpful in finding good books for the children to read. I have copies of this printed and included in my homeschool planning notebook.

What is your favorite book on this list?

Here is the stack that we picked up later this week. I have more on hold. We need to quick read these so we can get some more.

Beth

Sharing what I love with 

Beginning Readers

I have posted in the past a bit about teaching Miss K to read. Here is one. I have used Teach your child to read in 100 Easy Lessons. This year we are using Scaredy Cat. Miss K has excellent sight word reading which is good and bad. Good that she knows so many words but bad because she will pick a sight word that is similar and not sound out the word. We play sight word bingo.

I thought I would share some of our favorite beginning readers. We still enjoy Dick and Jane books. Two years ago she was reading Dick and Jane, see here. The simple words along with repetition make it easy for beginning readers. We have two Dick and Jane treasury books and have added a few others paperback Dick and Jane.

Biscuit is another favorite. Biscuit is such a lovable dog with simple adventures that are easy to read but give a great sense of accomplishment. I found a series of Biscuit phonics readers at Goodwill. I found all 12 and decided that was a good deal.

Henry and Mudge books are one of Miss K's current love. Again thrift stores are great places to find these books. I found one today along with a book by Syd Hoff.

Some others that we enjoy -- Mr. Putter and Tabby, Annie and Snowball by the same author as Henry and Mudge, books my Syd Hoff, Francis books, Little Bear, and others. We used to have a shelf of books -- beginning with Level 1 and going all the way up to Level 4. I feel that having a variety of books available for her to read, sitting and reading to her, or having her read to me are all part of developing her reading skills.

These are not beginning reads but I enjoy having lots of good books available for J to read as well. I was thrilled today at Goodwill to find five books by Dave and Neta Jackson. I will add those to the other two that I found earlier.

What beginning readers do your children enjoy? What do you enjoy reading?


Beth

Teaching Reading

Last year Miss K and I worked our way through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We finished the book. Miss K has a long list of words that she is able to sight read which is good but I just felt that she wasn't really sounding out words and understanding how to do that. Thanks to LeapFrog Fridge Phonics she has learned  her sounds. She has begun to read books but most of those are using all the sight words she knows. She is doing great at reading Biscuit books and a few others.

I had Scaredy Cat reading system on my shelf and decided it was time to use that. I have Letters, Vowels, and Words. Since she has  her sounds down, we jumped right to Vowels. I think this is something new for her. We are learning the vowels; she did an activity circling the vowels. It is fun to see her apply this when we are out and about. She was trying to read the Fred Meyer sign. She did say that e was a vowel.

Scaredy Cat has a number of ideas for making this a multi-sensory  approach. One of the ideas was a cornmeal tray. I didn't have cornmeal but had a can of hot chocolate powder that I wasn't sure how old it was so I decided to use that which was so much better than cornmeal. When you do a good job, you are allowed to lick your finger. Just what my chocolate loving girl wants to do.



As we have been working through this program I do see progress. We have learned our vowels and now she is working on the scared vowel sounds. She is sounding out words which is one of the goals for phonics this year.

Reading Day

We needed a change of pace and something fun. So I decided to have a reading day. I planned it and reserved a stack of books from the library. I am enjoying and blessed to have a wonderful library. I got a number of my book suggestions from this list. I just started at the beginning and worked my way down the list.
We did have green eggs and ham for breakfast. I could not add green food coloring to my eggs that was just beyond what I could do.

My kids loved it. I think it was one of their favorite breakfasts.
Some of the books we read that day included:

Angus and the Ducks by Marjorie Flack
Animals should definitely not wear clothing by Judi Barrett
And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss
Bambi’s Children by Felix Salten
The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward
An Amish Christmas by Richard Ammon
Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban
The Egg by M.P. Robertson
The Big Snow by Berta and Elmer Hader
Andy and the Lion by James Daugherty
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
Floss by Kim Lewis
Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett
The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright
Bats at the Library by Brian Lies
Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall
Morris Goes to School by B. Wiseman
The true book of Freedom and our U.S. Family by Paul Witty
Curious George at the Parade
Curious George goes to the hospital by Margret & H.A. Rey
Amos & Boris by William Steig

I think my favorite book was Animals should definitely not wear clothing. Daddy enjoyed reading Bats in the Library.

I thought I would be able to read more but I had a cold and my voice was giving out. It was a fun morning and one that I would repeat. We did get a long list of books read. It does require a bit of planning to get the books from the library.

Look Dick, look

Dick and Jane books are some of Miss K's favorite. Everyone here seems to get tired of reading the same words. We have one that she has had read to her a number of times. Then I found another one and recently gave it to her. This morning she pulled it off the shelf and started to read. I went over and read over her shoulder she was reading the words. I heard "funny Sally". She read about two stories until she came to the story about Jane and Puff. Puff was new to her.

She might have a label and some might think she is slow but it just takes a bit more time. She is smart and knows what is going on around her.

I tried to get it on video but my camera did not cooperate.

So read, read and read some more and then expect all kinds of things to happen.

Teaching Miss K to read

One of Miss K's goals for the year is to read 22 high frequency survival words such as girls, boys, men, women, restroom, and words like information which she can't even really say. We have been working on these for the past few weeks and she has been started to read about 15 of those words. She is a visual learner which is typical of Down Syndrome children.

I started teaching her to read when she was about 10 months old. I was inspired by the book Teach Your Baby to Read. I followed the instructions and made the cards and used a red marker. We did those on a regular basis. I don't know that she was reading but it did give her mental stimulation.

I also had the DVD series Your Baby can read. She watched them but honestly I didn't feel that it really helped her. I sold them on ebay.

When she was 18 months she got the Leap Frog refrigerator magnets. My sister-in-law gave it to her maybe that is why is the her favorite now. I had asked for no noisy toys that year but she said it was educational. It really was educational it taught her the letter names and sounds. I know that she knows the sounds because I can hear her saying the first letter sound with some words. We also have the word builder but because she is not at the point of making words it annoys me.

When she turned 3, I decided it was time for a bit more structured learning. Just structured on my part. I worked in teaching her colors and other words. I used 4x6 cards and wrote the words on there and then she matched beads.

At times you could tell she was thinking. The book that was the most helpful at this time was Teaching Reading to Children with Down Syndrome published be Woodbine Publishing. There were games and activities and encouraging stories. I started working with some of those ideas. Miss K was reading words that about the time she learned to say them. One of the things that we often do is put about 10 cards on the table and I will either say "hand me ____" or will give her a color bead and have her match color or put food on the words. This has been one way to test if she is reading the word.

One day when she was about 3 she did this letter mat -- sorting all the letters.

So now she is 6. She does a good job reading the words on cards and we are working on reading them in other places. The other day we saw a sign that said "Danger Playground Closed". Two of those three words were words that we are learning to read. It was good to reinforce her learning. I decided it is time to read Teaching Reading to Children with Down Syndrome again. I also want to add some phonics type program into the mix. She knows a number of her letter sounds and I can hear her starting to sound out words.

Her official goal for the year is to be able to read 22 high frequency words. I would also like to get some books that she can read either find some or make some for her.

Learning was so much fun that she lined up her babies and taught them.

Learning is fun and it is also fun to watch her learn new things. Here she is working on shapes. I love those shapes. She is probably the only child to have maple shapes thanks to grandpa.

We continue working on this and are excited to she want she can do.