Penny A Page

Kaitlyn Joy has been able to read since she was three and a half thanks to LeapFrog videos.  Someone asked once before which ones we used and I apologize I forgot to respond back.  We have and sometimes will pull for refreshers: Letter Factory (uses catchy ways to teach letter sounds), Talking Words Factory (puts small words together), Word Caper (teaches rules like the silent e), and Math Circus.  We have another one, perhaps it was Learn to Read at the Storybook Factory.  I know it put the words together and talked about punctuation.  I would recommend the first three videos in the order I gave them because they of course build on each other.  Kj learned to read REALLY fast after watching the first two videos.  I was thankful to find Word Caper because it helped A LOT in how to deal with silent vowels.  I say one of their rules to her a lot; actually I said it today.

"When two vowels go a walking, the first one does the talking"

Meaning when two vowels are together like in "main", the i is silent.

After two years of being able to read you would think she's flying through books, but... she's a lazy reader.  She's just not motivated.  I was talking to a mom at her school about my motivation issues and she told me she pays her 5th or 6th grade son a penny a page.  I'm amazed that's enough to get him going, but it works so why not???  I pitched the idea to Kj and she loved it.  She read a Dr Seuss book and got $.19 for it.  I figure she will have a chance to learn money over the summer too; I gave her a dime, nickel and four pennies. 

Earlier this week I was fed up with Kj wanting to play her LeapPad (LP) all day.  I couldn't get her to do anything else.  I told her I thought it would be a good idea if she would read me a book before she could play her LP each day.  She said it was a bad idea.  I told her, "not if you want to play your LP it's not."  Today was day five of no LP.  A little after 6pm she came to me with a book and started reading it.  It was to late for her to play the LP, but she REALLY wanted to so we set out to read the book.  I agreed to her reading 10 pages, about half the book, then being able to stay up an hour late to play.  It took some doing to get the last two pages done, but she did it and earned $.10 in the process.