100 Easy Lessons -- Lesson 4

Noogs continues to show interest in doing her "schoolwork", so we've progressed to Lesson 4 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, as well as chapter 3 of Stuart Little. I'm enjoying the lessons, because it's giving a structure to our morning -- something we've lacked before. And I've gone ahead and bought the book, so that we don't have to keep renewing the library's copy. (Plus, I know that at some point, someone is going to write in it or spill something on it.)

Yesterday, Noog unexpectedly balked at putting sounds together. She'd enjoyed making "m" and "s" sounds, and learning "a". However, when it came time to read "a" and "m" together ("am", of course), she was indignant and insisted on making each sound separately. I didn't push it, because each new lesson is followed by a review lesson. This morning, we did the review and it didn't seem to bother her anymore. She doesn't put the sounds together smoothly, and I don't think it has really dawned on her that she's reading the word "am", but that's okay.

The end of each lesson involves writing sounds. She enjoys making "m", but has trouble with the "s". I found I have to tear a page out of the lined school paper notebook I bought for her and just give her one page a day, because otherwise she'll write on every page of her notebook. You can't limit the artistic muse, I guess.

Here are my thoughts on 100 Easy Lessons, so far:
I'm enjoying the brevity of the lessons, and the clarity of the instructions in the book. I read the introduction pretty thoroughly to get a feel for what I was about to do, and everything seems to be laid out fairly neatly. I was worried at first about the orthography, but then I recalled my time studying Old English -- at first the vowels were marked as to long and short sounds, and the easier reading selections were all printed that way. As your vocabulary grew and the selections became more difficult, the vowels were printed as originally written, and you used context and your knowledge of the vocabulary to properly translate the word. Makes sense.

The authors of the book want the children to learn to write "a" as you see it here -- with a crook up top and a litte ball below. Noogs doesn't like this, and knows that "a" can be written either like that or in the more simple fashion with a circle and a line next to it. That's how we've been practicing it in our writing exercises. Outside of calligraphy, who learns to write "a" in font-style? Seeing as the authors use their own orthography for other letters, I don't see why they couldn't have used the simpler "a", unless it's just that that's not how it's printed in most books.

We tried reading a bit of "Green Eggs and Ham" with its famous opening salvo: "I am Sam. Sam I am." She could sound it out, but didn't quite connect the sounds with words. Well, give it time...