Chugging along!

Ms. P is coming along nicely with her reading progress! It's amazing to think that less than two months ago, she couldn't recognize most of her letters, let alone be able to read something. We now go through one book a night, with her reading 99% of each book we do. I'm so proud of her!

We've been raiding a friend's "library"--well, more like her actual home!--for new books and I've been really happy with some of the treasures we've unearthed. Bob Books, for starters! It's a great way for pre-readers to start off with simple, repetitive words and stories.

We have moved on to some more complicated books, like the Biscuit books (in the My First I Can Read Book series), but I am trying to keep it simple, with few sentences on each page so that Ms. P. can feel a sense of accomplishment when she finishes an entire book.

I've also been interested in using the following websites (and hope to use these as well for Mr. M when he gets a bit older):

• Starfall.com: Free phonics site
• Oxford Owl: Free children's ebooks (ages 3-11)
• Literactive: Guided readers for pre-school, kindergarten and grade 1 students
• International Children's Library
• Scholastic Teacher Express: Great site for finding new teaching materials

My next mission, while keeping Ms. P interested in reading, is to find out where I can get my hands on where she should be reading for each grade level so I can use it as reference for future lessons! Life is getting busy, busy, busy!