Weekend & Family Friday: Scented Markers

Responding to a late in the day question re the reading book I got for my kid– teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons.

Our background: she’s turning 6 in a few weeks. When we began the book, she already knew all her letters and had a decent grasp on sounds. She has been enthusiastic about this the whole time. I’m not forcing her into it.

I really like the book. The thing that is extra nice is that it has a section in the front about pedagogy of young kids and common pitfalls (like talking too much and over-explaining in a way that overwhelms kids). Stuff that I would not know, as someone who has never taken an early childhood education class. He also talks about how the way kids are taught to read now is not best because it involves a lot of memorizing sight words and looking at pictures and guessing what the words are rather than sounding things out phonetically. Once you get to the point in the book where the child is reading a “story”, they only get to see the picture once they have already read the words. There is a lot of repetition and building on previous concepts and none of the lessons have been overwhelming for kiddo.

Each lesson has a color coded script that tells you word for word what to say to the child as you teach them to read. You literally just read the dark pink words. It’s amazing. The book says it could take 20 minutes a day, but it has never taken longer than 10 for us. We’re on lesson 40 and kid has learned enough so that she can read the first box of the bob books. We haven’t been good about doing it every day and she’s still been able to retain everything.

Help me oh wise and knowing moms! We are starting in person kindergarten and invited a girl in the class over for an outdoors play date this weekend. We’re planning to ride bikes. Any other suggestions to tack onto this play date (and other outside play dates) so I can help facilitate getting to know each other with new friends my DD hasn’t met? Added complication is this is Texas so it’s pretty hot, but we are still trying to keep play dates outside. Sadly don’t have access to a pool!

My 2.5 year old is getting frustrated and down on herself when she can’t do something. As an example, she used to love drawing but now asks for “help” aka “please draw a rainbow” or “draw a doggie”. When I tell her that she can draw them, she just says, but “I’m not a good drawer!” It is really heartbreaking to watch. Clearly no one has ever, ever told her this so I don’t know why she is being so hard on herself. It isn’t just drawing, but that is one clear example. I want her to just enjoy herself but she’s not responding to our “It doesn’t matter! Just have fun! You are still learning!” pleas. Is this just a phase? I’m worried that if we don’t help now she will have a fear of failure and won’t be open to doing new things.

We talked about TV shows we hated (ie Blippi, and Peppa, which I seem to be an outlier in hating), what shows can you tolerate or even like?
My 3 year old likes Stinky and Dirty and Tittipo, and I find them both quite cute and not grating. I wished he liked Daniel Tiger more. Simon the Rabbit is a new one for us, and I like it because the mom has a job and then just reads in the garden the rest of the time, and my son likes to say ‘just like mama!’ We also like these ‘kid documentaries’, Here Comes a Digger/Tractor/Fire Engine etc. They are pretty old-school and I feel like I’ve gotten much better at identifying my farm vehicles as a result.

Another vote for Depends! Though actually I liked the Always brand, but same concept. So much easier for the first few days, after which I preferred always infiniti. For second kid I brought a pack of the adult diapers to the hospital, so much easier.