Spelling and reading

The other day, Ryanne asked me to write my name for her to trace it. She handed me the pen and paper, "Write mommy like m-o-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m." When did she pick that up?

I picked up a copy of this book to start teaching her to read. She's shown a lot of interest in sounds and letters and pretends to read stuff all the time. I figured she was almost ready. The first lesson is sounding out "m" and "s". We did that and the next day she was pointing to them on signs and telling me she saw "mmmmmm"s and "ssssss"s. That was fast.

The next part of the lesson is learning to take words that are slow or fast and speed them up or slow them down. The example in the book for slow word is "motor (pause) boat". She's instructed to say it fast.

M: "Motor (pause) boat" Now you say it fast.
R: "Fast."
M: "No, you say motor (pause) boat fast"
R: "Motorboat fast"
M: "Leave off the fast and just say motorboat without pausing like mommy does."
R: "Motorboat faster"

This went on for quite some time. Chrys almost hurt himself laughing. She just didn't get the game and the explanation in the book wasn't helping. She got the repeating and then was having a hard time with the instruction instead of repeating the words used. There was a second round of these games.

M: I'm going to say a word and then you say it fast. "Mmmmmmmeeeeeee"
R: "Yyyyyyooooouuuuuu fast"

You get where this is going. Oy the frustration. I gave up on the lesson after 10 minutes or so. Maybe we'll try again next week.