This year I've been homeschooling my 4 yr old boy (5 this summer). We had a very productive first month of homeschooling. We did about 30 minutes every other day using Bob books, Saxon K and some cutting, coloring or mazes. In that time he sounded-out and read the first two sets of Bob books (he had played with starfall and knew most letter sounds). Once that first month had passed he started refusing to do any school. We stopped because he is 4 and I want him to enjoy school. Around the end of September when he was bored I'd ask if he wanted to do school. Sometimes it sounded like an exciting proposition so we kept on going with Saxon K (which he calls the fun homeschool) and occasionally he would read one bob book for a special treat. Eventually we started with OPGTTR. DS was doing well. He was reading (sounding out?) the passages in the book, but his eyes would glaze over. He was doing it for the special homeschool treats. Once again, the time came when he did not want to read it because he thought it was boring. And to be fair, it is kind of boring. Then my husband got transferred for his job. Between the craziness of keeping a house ready for showings and preparing for a cross-country move by myself and two kids, we did not do any formal school between January and March. He did play in the computer a lot with starfall (which is now boring) and abcmouse (which also became boring) and pbskids. This excessive computer use was because I had 20 showings in 6 weeks. While unpacking after the move, I found a still wrapped set of new Dick and Jane books my MIL got the kids for Christmas. I was very adamant that I would only do phonics with DS based on OPGTR. But since it's been a while since we had done anything I thought, well why not? Let's see if he can read them. So I took book 1 out. All the "Oh, oh, oh." sounded hilarious in my head so I read it out loud in the funniest way possible with faces and voices and all. Then we discussed the pictures. Lo and behold, my child wanted to read it himself. With giggles. I know many of those words are sight words, but in the last two days he has chosen to read the first three books (granted, they seem fairly simple) but he went from sounding out Bob books to almost fluent reading. Since he is more amenable to reading Dick and Jane if I read them first (in my hilarious mommy voice) I am not sure if this is really reading or if he is just repeating. I didn't know he could recognize "yellow" and "blue" we never reviewed those words. Like I said before, he did a lot of computer time during the crazy move so maybe he picked them up then? Should I just go with it? If so, we would move on to what? I feel a little lost since I've never done this before and the logical method (to me anyway) is to follow a curriculum in order rather than jumping around. We had done several OPGTTR lessons and he can sound out words like h-e-l-p and blend, but we never moved on to multiple syllable words. I am confused and I do not want to mess him up. It is likely DS will soon find Dick and Jane boring too, but for now he does like them and the pictures. Opinions and suggestions would be appreciated. I do not post often because my kids are little and I am very new. However, I've read several threads before posting this. I will therefore add this note which I think is unrelated, but perhaps will prevent replies such as "just read to your kids and don't worry about it" ?: We do lots of reading using books the kids pick out from the library and if it's nice we will go to playgrounds several times a week. DS is a mini paleontologist (joking, he just loves dinosaurs) and recently we've moved on to obsess about planets. And yes, both DS and DD (3) play with Lego, blocks, boxes, dolls (action figures), cars and such. Plus we do lots of science (planting, weed pulling, looking at stars, talking about germs) and experiments. DS is not yet writing. I offer crayons, colored pencils and paints and he does a little "abstract" art which is fine. As of age 4, he cannot write his name and I'm ok with it for now because he can spell it lol. He does color in the calendar square for Saxon math. I am bilingual, so occasionally we do Spanish time. And all the other normal things ...

What have you seen to be the most helpful in solidifying sight words? I am noticing a few gaps in my 1st grader's sight word vocabulary. I just don't have the time to do drill flashcards; I need something she can do independently. I was thinking of getting a sight word workbook or reader, but there are so many. And one she has is too easy. She is reading books like Amelia Bedelia and Make Way for Ducklings now. We are continuing in our phonics lessons, but she needs this extra sight word practice to help her reading as I am supplying too many sight words for her. Here's some workbooks I was looking at: 100 Write-and-Learn Sight Word Practice Pages: Cut & Paste Sight Words Sentences Mini-books Thanks!

What have you seen to be the most helpful in solidifying sight words? I am noticing a few gaps in my 1st grader's sight word vocabulary. I just don't have the time to do drill flashcards; I need something she can do independently. I was thinking of getting a sight word workbook or reader, but there are so many. And one she has is too easy. She is reading Amelia Bedelia and books like Make Way for Ducklings now. I think teaching phonics is best, but I am supplying too many sight words when she reads so she needs some extra practice. Here's some workbooks I was looking at: 100 Write-and-Learn Sight Word Practice Pages Cut & Paste Sight Words Sentences Mini-books Thanks!

How do you teach these? Just with flash cards and reading book? Do you drill them? I found this list, does this look pretty accurate?

If you are doing a phonic program is it bad if they learn some site words early on?

I was taught to read by my parents, starting with sight words. Phonics I mostly taught myself as I memorized more and more words and began seeing the patterns. This system seems to have worked (at least for me). In 7th grade I was tested and read 1270 words per minute, with 100% comprehension. So, I see that most people here are fans of teaching reading phonically as opposed to using sight words, and I was just wondering what the reasoning behind that is? I understand every child is different...

My mom is a first grade public school teacher. She's taught elementary school over 40 years, the last 26 years she's taught 1st grade. For the most part we don't discuss homeschooling because she is so opposed to it. I had noticed some readers in a recent Scholastic flyer that were leveled A, B, C, etc. that I'd not heard of before. Even the level A looked like it had a lot of sight words. I asked her if she knew what the levels meant. She says it is the new way to teach reading and I really need to teach it to the twins so they won't be behind when they go to school. (I have no intention of putting them in before high school if ever but in her mind they should be doing exactly what PS kids are doing) She was so concerned that she is mailing me a list of 125 sight words that the twins need to memorize immediately. :glare: She really thinks I should aim for them knowing all 220 dolche words as soon as possible. She says that the kids can read more fluently at a younger age if they have all these words memorized. She is totally convinced it is better. They have been using this method at her school for a few years and I know when they first introduced it she was so opposed to it because she said phonics was the best way. Apparently she now has bought into the whole Balanced Literacy approach now. :glare: This is someone that has probably taught thousands of kids to read. I know she has no say in the curriculum used in her class but I'm kind of surprised she has totally jumped on the sight word is better bandwagon. It sounds like the kids spend a lot of time using the pictures in a story to figure out the words when they read. This method seems like the polar opposite of PR which I just started with the twins. Her school uses Everyday Math and has for probably 8 years. When my oldest was in 1st grade she sent me the complete 1st grade EM because she wanted dd to learn math the new way. It was 2 books and we made it through half of the first one and I kept waiting for the real math to show up. She's totally bought into new math as well even though she taught the old way for many years. I have never had a child learn to read at school but we are considering PS for our youngest child. He is delayed and gets a lot of services through the PS. I have found out from other parents that they use Balance Literacy at the school ds goes to and the more I hear about it the more I don't like it. I think it makes the kids appear like they are reading great by the end of K but it seems like so much of it is due to sight words. I had no so much emphasis was on sight word methods. My 6 yo ds attends cub scouts with boys that are in 1st grade and I know my dh has been impressed by some of the words the boys knew. I'll be interested to see the list of sight words when it comes. Several of them ones she mentioned were totally phonetic and the twins already know but they do sound them out. They are getting more fluent in sounding out CVC words I can't see any advantage of them memorizing them. My dh and oldest dd have dyslexia so I've really tried to avoid sight words with the younger kids.

So, I know that sight words are bad, dd is already predisposed to dislexia genetically and with some slight indicators (a lot of letter reverals) which might be just her age and might not. We have been going through phonics readers and the only sight word I've included is "the". It is "the word you don't sound out" when she comes to it and starts trying to sound it out. Is there a rule for it? In the readers our current book is introducing number words. I do not know the phonics rules for one or two. Are there any? The phoics readers we are using are 98% decodable with basic phonics instruction, but even Bob books use THE and number words. Are a few sight words ok?

I'm on a mommy board that I've been on since I was pregnant with my oldest. All of our babies are kindergarteners now. They are all talking about how their kids are starting to read sight words (public school). Well.....I'm not teaching sight words. I feel they are useless. We started going through the Get Ready, Get Set, Go for the Code books with my 5 year old DD. We began them last year for preschool and we're continuing through them (we are at the end of book 2) this year for K. We're learning a letter a week. We're learning how to recognize that letter, writing that letter (both capital and lowercase), as well as learning the sound that the letter makes. When we have learned all the letter sounds, we will move on to putting the sounds together. Am I doing this right? I mean, in my mind sight words are useless.....why even teach them?

I was looking at Dancing Bears and I saw it referred to as synthetic phonics.

Don't tell me to switch to AAS!:tongue_smilie: She does really well with phonetic words, including shave, lunch, chess, etc. The problem is when we have a sight word list. She has been working on the same list for two weeks and still does not have them down. She past the test for the first list, then asked me to spell one of the words when she was writing a letter. I have had her jump to the letters on the floor, build the words out of foam letters, trace the letters with her finger while saying the word and the letters, and copy the words on paper 1-3 times everyday. (Though honestly, last week we only did the copying and skipped one day). Today, I gave her sentences to copy with the words in them. Here they are: there, where, were, what, said, does. Should I move on to more phonetic words (some of these will come up as phonetic words anyway) and then come back to them? Or keep at it next week until it sticks? Any approaches I am missing?