BINGO anyone?

Kindergarten style that is!

Katie is learning to read this year. She is putting all of her letter sounds together to form words.

I add new mini reading books to her lessons each week for her to read and by the time Friday rolls around she is so happy and proud that she has been able to read them from front to back. I'm pretty happy too because the task of teaching a little one to read just seemed impossible to me. My other two children both went to public school at that grade level and so that is where they learned the basics.

As a homeschooler it's a whole other ballgame.

You take on the responsibility of teaching your child which quickly makes you realize that if you screw up ~ well then you are doing so at the expense of your child.

But I'll stop there on that one because I could write a whole post (or more) discussing just the pros and cons of homeschooling. I'll just leave it by saying that there are so many factors to consider when deciding between homeschooling or public schools. Just be sure to know exactly WHY your are considering it and then weigh the good and bad as well as what will work the best for you and your family.

See how sidetracked I can get!

Now back to the Bingo~

Repetition is the key for teaching the basics. (Or so I think it is.)

I tried to think of a fun way to blend new reading words with old ones so that she could continue to work with all of them in hopes that she doesn't do a backslide. (Kind of like the saying ~If you don't use it, you will lose it.)

So I decided to make large 12X12 Bingo cards using some of my scrapbooking card stock. I drew my lines and then filled the spaces with all the words that we have been working on as well as a few new ones that we will be learning. My 4th grader even joined in on the game. He would hold up the Bingo word and ask her to say it first. If she was having trouble with it then he would help her sound it out till she got it right. After that they would both search for the word on their cards and continue on until someone yelled BINGO.

Hopefully playing little games like this will help to keep what she has learned fresh in her mind while moving on and learning new words.

Just a simple and inexpensive way to make learning a little fun!

Well that's all for today. It's been a busy week and I am sooo glad the weekend is almost here. We have had two school delays this week and they are calling for a small bit of snow tonight which will probably result in another delay for tomorrow. The kids sure don't mind but it makes it hard to keep school lessons on track.

On the flip side maybe the white stuff will cover up all this mud and I won't have to deal with muddy paw prints everytime I let the dogs in or out. :o)