I realized after my last post that I didn’t give enough emphasis to Ella’s reading on her own. That is what I envisioned her doing a long time ago. It is a HUGE deal. Just wanted to reiterate that.

There has been an extended break in reading, unfortunately. I used the library web site to request five books a couple weeks ago and every one of them, although listed at Book Adventure as level zero, were all too challenging for Ella to read and test. Due to some family issues, I wasn’t able to make it to the library to go through the list, checking each book out personally. Finally, last Thursday I made it and checked out five books that are more appropriate. Ella has read two of the books already and we’ll continue to read at least one a day.

Ella’s Book Adventure points are at 1,800 right now. When she gets to 2,000 I am going to purchase for her the Nook game Cut the Rope. She enjoys it a lot and there is definitely some thinking involved in that game so that is excellent.

I haven’t done a phonogram test with Ella for a few weeks so we need to get that done. It is difficult to maintain the Phonogram Master status without constant work so I feel like I’m letting her down a bit.

Ella continues to sound out too many words. I have to remind her to not sound out words she really does know, i.e. it and is. I will say, however, that Ella is adding more and more sight words all the time. I know she will continue with this, but that sounding out habit has to be fought all the time.

When going through some old CDs recently, I came across the game Jump Start First Grade Reading. I fired it up on our computer. It is an old game and doesn’t run very smoothly on Windows 7, but Ella has been playing it and is doing great. It has three different levels, with the first level focusing on three-letter words. Need to push her to move to the 2nd level. There is a lot of work with spelling, beginning and ending sounds, and rhyming. I wish I could find the Reader Rabbit game the other two kids played and the little books that came with that program.