A World of Learning

 Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I love getting into the holidays, no matter what the occasion! Apparently, the kids I tutor do too. You simply have to wear green on St. Paddy's Day! Although in Ireland, you wear green if you're Catholic and you wear orange if you're Protestant, which I am. But I still like to "fit in" and wear green on St. Patrick's Day! Here are some fun photos of me with the kids I tutor, all of us wearing green!

 One of the boys I tutor enjoys reading informational books rather than fiction. Right now he's reading a book that I took him to the library and he picked out himself. It's about animals living in different habitats. He was reading right along when he said "with sof, thick ... I'm reading it exactly like it says." I didn't catch what he had said at first, then he showed me the typo. We both had a chuckle about it, but I knew from his catching the typo that he was really paying attention to what he was reading. Then, a few days later, I was reading and caught a typo in that book! I have had a few books self-published and yes, there are a few typos in them, despite them having been proofread several times. But it always surprises me when I find mistakes in other published works. So I thought I'd point them out here. 

 I have lately been tutoring three of the five usual kids that I have on my tutoring list. I have missed seeing the two boys that I haven't tutored since before Christmas. I finally got to see one of the boys that I have tutored in math and English! At first, he didn't want to do it, probably because it's been so long since he's had to have a tutor. But he warmed up fairly quickly. After all, he does know me. But he doesn't like math, so he was very solemn during that lesson. But he is learning to multiply, so that is good. His mother said that his skills have slacked off since I haven't been tutoring him, so I know now that I was doing him some good! I hope we'll keep it up and he'll get back to where he was.  He was happier with the English lesson. He learned where to put punctuation marks, but was having a bit of a hard time with it at first. I think I'll do a review with him, along with where to put commas in a sentence, which we also worked on t...

 I sometimes tutor a four-year-old boy who has just started preschool and is learning to identify the letters of the alphabet. He already knows the letters in his name: E-L-L-I-O-T. He knows a few other letters, like A and X, but we're working on the rest. So I use plastic letters in what I call my "Monster Box," which I have posted about previously. I also have a laminated sheet of construction paper with the alphabet on it. So Elliot has to reach into the box (a decorated tissue box) and pick a letter and say what it is. If he doesn't know, I tell him and have him repeat what I said. Then he has to find the letter on the alphabet board until he has all of the letters filled in.  Then I have him write the letters of the alphabet (in order, of course😊) and say them as he writes them on special lined paper made for beginning writers. Sometimes he needs my help to write a letter like a W, holding his hand while he holds the pencil, and I describe what I'm doing to ...

 Adding new suffixes and beginning sounds of words are just another step toward being able to read well, and my Hooked on Phonics books are introducing those skills. The six-year-old is learning, for example, ch- and sh- words. She is learning the different sounds that these letter blends make. She is also learning how to spell grade-level words. We were playing the spelling beanbag toss game and one of the words was "much." I started with M and she said U, then I said C, and she had to think about it, since the word ended in the -ch sound. After thinking about it for a few seconds, she said H and threw the beanbag back to me. She did a great job, considering it was a new sound. Her mom was in the other room (the girl is homeschooled) and she said "Great job!" I think she was really impressed. The girl is learning fast.  Now we're working on -ing and -er endings. I'm teaching her the sound that -ing always makes, and the sound -er makes. The book from Hooked...

 Hello again, my faithful blog readers! I truly appreciate knowing that people (at least a few) are reading my blog posts. I hope they are getting something out of them.  Anyway, the reason for this post is that I know someone who homeschools her kids, and they have outgrown reading phonics books. I work with a first grader who is an early reader, so she donated ALL of the books she had for that reading level! Thirty-three of them! I'm all set to have books for my first-grade student to read as she becomes more confident in the words she is learning. I am so thankful! I will need to look over them and put them in order from easiest to most challenging, as I glanced through a few of them and definitely saw a difference in the amount of reading in each book. They are just short stories that can be read in a few minutes, so I might have her read two books each session. After she has finished all of these, she should be ready to move on to chapter books for young readers!