It's Official: We All Know How to Read

Yep, another homeschooling book done, this time Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, or OPGTR for short.



Did this actually work to teach my child reading? Hmm, well, there's a question -- just how did she learn to read? We started OPGTR a bit, using the free downloads ... she did some of the the Explode the Code books because she longed for workbooks (Get Ready, Get Set, and Go For the Code), she really enjoyed Bob Books and worked her own way through 2 or 3 sets of them, we explored the alphabet using Christopherus First Grade Syllabus ... and then one day I realized that she was reading the parent's script out of OPGTR as easily as she was reading the child's script. So, it seems she just sort of worked it all out for herself, having been exposed to a lot of reading.

It was fairly early in OPGTR that this happened (maybe around lesson 75?), so we decided to just go ahead and read through a few lessons per day and see what happened. Somewhere up in the 200s we started hitting words she would stumble on, like "cordial" and "pique". And the later lessons provided good discussion on spelling, particularly the words of French origin. We also had a chance to discuss the correct pronunciation of "Xavier", since it it imperative to pronounce it correctly when discussing college basketball (I once knew a woman who always pronounced it "Ex-ayvier", which pretty much destroyed any inkling that she had a CLUE about college basketball).

As soon as we were done with the book we applauded wildly ... then she hesitated ... asked softly, "Mommy, are you going to mail this to someone now?"

"Well..." I sort of guessed where this was headed, that she'd read my mind as I've been wondering where to post this as used curriculum FOR SALE.

She picked up the book and cradled it in her arms. "I mean, are you going to sell it? You can't! I need to practice some of the words I didn't know!"

Yow, I feel as though I've been selling her childhood memories out from under her. So, this book will NOT be sold, at least not any time soon.