We finished our second Hardy Boys today. Yippee. He wants to stay with this series, so I’m heading off to the bookstore to pick up another title.
Haroun’s word recognition skills have gotten much better through this book, he seems to have figured out the suffixing tricks and regularly nails long compounded words like ‘opportunity’ and ‘unconscious’. He gingerly picks through phrases like “detailed directions”. He is obviously enjoying the puzzle-solving part of reading: sounding out a word, then recognizing it, then making sense of it in context. He *knows* he is amazing.
More importantly, he is self-correcting more. He increasingly realizes that a word is wrong and backtracks before I have a chance to correct him.
And he likes the stories – which may be the most important predictor of future success. They are capturing his imagination. I still have to check on his understanding two or three times per page. Today we googled sound studios, mixing boards, the Hollywood sign, and more. We also watched a Youtube about mixing sound during his first break.
Progress on all fronts. It was a happy day.
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If your older child struggles with reading, run through the BLENDING program – 20 minutes per day. If it is not needed, then you will finish by the second or third day. If it IS needed (and you will know by the first session) then stick to it diligently. Your child cannot acquire strong reading skills until he or she can blend accurately, smoothly, and confidently.
The BLENDING program is free (all our tools are free), and you can find it here.
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