Buddy's Midyear Reading Evaluation - Eva Varga

I have been having much more success teaching Buddy to read than I did with Sweetie (she and I just butted heads too much). When we first started, I tried to use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons but it was clear that he didn’t like it either. I thereby opted to go with a suggestion a veteran homeschool mom had mentioned to me early on … simply putting sight words on 3×5 cards and slowly building from there.

We began with words he’d picked up on his own; train, stop, go, Polar Express, North Pole, round trip, and engine. Then I introduced the Now I’m Reading! series by Nora Gaydos. I read the first book aloud to him a few times then we read it together. Of course, as he read, he relied solely on the illustrations and his memory. I then wrote the key words from the reader on cards and we practiced daily. The following week, we proceeded with the second reader and did the same. Additionally, we started using a phonics workbook and added the words it introduced to cards as well.

With the cards, we’ve also started practicing writing skills. I lay out the cards he can read independently on the floor and ask him to pick a few to make sentences. He writes out this sentence in his writing notebook. On Wednesday last week, these were his sentences:

He is now comfortable reading 50+ words and though I have to bribe him with stars (that can be converted into dollars and treats) to sit down and practice, he doesn’t get as frustrated as Sweetie did. He is progressing very well and I’m so pleased.