J-jo is improving tremendously in his reading.  He’s so excited that he can read, but it takes tremendous effort on his part so sometimes he isn’t keen to practice.  I try to find innovative ways to entice him and on this particular day, I had misplaced the All About Reading game we were supposed to play.  (I ripped out multiple pages, took them upstairs to go laminate them and inadvertently misplaced them!)   I rewrote what I could see of the fluency word list from the teacher’s manual onto a white board and J-jo would read, run to get blocks, then return to me to make a tower with the blocks.  It was nothing major, but he thought he was playing and had tremendous fun.

I reviewed All About Reading Level 1(affiliate link) in this post a year and a half ago.  J-jo just wasn’t ready for it and he wasn’t ready for it for a long time.  Even when he started sounding out CVC words on his own, he just wasn’t ready to use a formal program.  Back in March, when he started asking for school, I reintroduced All About Reading.  We’ve been taking it really slowly, mixing it up with a bunch of other resources I have (namely reading Bob books every day), but our success with it has given him confidence to push through hurdles.

A recent challenge came when I introduced the “th” phonogram.  It has two sounds (think of the word “them” and the word “math”) and not only was J-jo having a hard time remembering them, but he couldn’t pronounce them! He lisps and so says, “vvvv” and “fff” for the two “th” sounds.  It makes it frustrating for him and was leading to a bunch of guessing.

He likes the Adventures in Reading with the Zig-Zag Zebra file folder games so we will  revisit these as well to add in extra practice.

When we first started the program, there was no way to entice him to do the fluency sheets.  Having him read Bob books was already stretching him.  We just skipped all the fluency sheets until now, 3 months later,  when his maturity and desire have improved to the point that he now reads easily and is willing to do these fluency sheets.

It is an expensive program, but we like it more and more as we use it.  The games make it fun, and this particular kid of mine likes when I add fun into the school equation.  I think the key is using it when your child is ready for it so there isn’t so much frustration on the part of both child and parent!