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DD cannot blend.....advice please....


Hebrews3:13
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My youngest is 5 1/2. The way her birthday falls this autumn she will be an older K-5er. She has known her phonics for over a year and I have tried to get her blending multiple times. She just cannot do it. She cannot hear it. She can zoom through sounds, but put two sounds together and things come to a screeching halt.

 

I have taught my two others to read, so I had some of this with my son. Honestly though he was just not ready for any part of school at this age. He was immature and I just backed off. DD is the opposite. She has wanted to read for a while. She colors well, is learning to write her letters better and better, knows colors and shapes, and can count to 50. She loves for me to read to her and pretends to read all the time. It is breaking my heart that I cannot seem to help her get over this hump. She is so eager and excited. I always end on a good note, but still things do not progress.

 

I have the CLE LTR and we have started that, but anyone who has used it knows it begins with some sight words. Of course, she is bright so those are easy. I also have tried to get even simple words like "at" out of her to no avail. We have phonics pathways, which has seemed to work better than OPGTR at this point.

 

Does anyone have any advice? PLEASE give me some new exciting way to help her with this. I just don't know what else to try. In Phonics Pathways, do I move ahead to the next page, even though I helped her do the blends and she cannot do them on her own or are we stuck there? She wants to do the book and can zoom through the vowel pages in the front or any single consonants, but then we were stuck when s-a came along. I helped her through all of them so she would not feel badly, but now do I do the M page tomorrow and help her or do the S one again? I think she will be upset to do the same one again.

 

I appreciate any help you all can offer. This is a new problem for me. I realize she is not officially in Kindergarten, but she wants to read and begin school so I did not want to thwart her.

 

~Laurie

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Blending is a developmental thing. My oldest knew his letters and sounds for 2 years before he could blend. He could chunk a word for about a year (c-a-t), but couldn't put the sounds together. He did best when I backed off, let him play starfall.com, and just let his mind stew on it for a bit. One day, he picked up "Go, Dog, Go!" and read it to me - 30 pages of it! He had apparently been soaking up the reading things, but just couldn't apply it until blending clicked. Once it did, reading took off.

 

So I would recommend a break for a month or two, then revisit it. I like syllables like in Webster's Speller for working on the blends. I've been doing that with my second son (though he could blend already when we started). I find that the more we do the syllables, the less he has to sound them out. I do help him with them if needed, and we do move on and then circle back as needed. I throw in breaks now and then to let his mind soak it all in.

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Did you try the blending train game in PP's? It helped my dd get over the blending hump. I actually made the train pieces with the letters and did the train activity exactly as described in the book. I also made sa, se, ect... cards and played the bug game in PP's. Try the games.

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HI Laurie

I'm using the same PP with three kids. Have you copied and cut out the train pieces for the simple blend it game?

How about a few weeks of just modeling the two letter blend pages? You demonstrate by saying it and just have her repeat it. Some kids benefit from just hearing it modeled over and over again. I have one kid who needs this for math and reading. When I try to to get her to "figure out" a concept before she is ready, she panics and then her brain shuts down, but with a couple of my other kids, they love to puzzle things out. I just have to model it over and over and over and over for her and then when the time is right, ask the how and why.

The premise of Phonics Pathways is learning to blend, so I wouldn't move on in the book, if it were me. I found the instructional pages in PP were very helpful. She also has a website

I'm nearing the end of PP with my dd7. There were days when I despaired that we would even get through 1/2 page. All of a sudden this year, the reading switch "clicked" and now she is trucking on through. For us, anyway, I am glad we took it very slow.

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my son was similar. what helped him a lot was the dvd "talking word factory". it is the follow-up to the "the letter factory". it was a fun way for him to grasp & apply the concept of blending. he also did well with online games. we used CLE LTR as well & are now working through R&S phonics. hth.

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Did you try the blending train game in PP's? It helped my dd get over the blending hump. I actually made the train pieces with the letters and did the train activity exactly as described in the book. I also made sa, se, ect... cards and played the bug game in PP's. Try the games.

 

I have an eighth edition. I have had it many years and used it with my oldest. Is this something new in a later edition? I cannot find this train in my book. Stink. I hope I do not have to buy a new one. Can someone tell me how to make this game or is that a no-no? Sigh. :confused:

Edited by Hebrews3:13
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my son was similar. what helped him a lot was the dvd "talking word factory". it is the follow-up to the "the letter factory". it was a fun way for him to grasp & apply the concept of blending. he also did well with online games. we used CLE LTR as well & are now working through R&S phonics. hth.

 

and believe me she has watched them all. So far that is making no difference. I agree those DVD's are excellent help though. My autistic son memorized all of the phonics this way.

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I looked online at the table of contents in the ninth edition. We have NO GAMES in our edition. There is the shuffle game but none of the others. Otherwise it looks exactly the same.

 

Guess I am out another $18 if I want these. Bummer. I have used that book fine without the games until now.

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If you just want the games out of the book, have you tried the library?

 

Not to be a downer, but my dd who wouldn't read by sounding out turned out to have eye problems. We eventually got her checked by a developmental optometrist http://www.covd.org and did vision therapy. But at the time, what worked for us was flashcards. We took the words she had spelled (we were using SWR/WRTR) and put them on flashcards to practice reading multiple times a day. It worked. She still couldn't sound out words, lol, but she could read.

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