My DGD attends the local Catholic School and the teacher there is super but I am just about at my limit.

Each week the kids get two new sight words to work on.  My DGD has gotten the colors down pat but the rest of the words are not sinking in.  The teacher says, "Oh, it will just click one day."  Really, cuz we are now into the second nine weeks and the kid just keeps get farther and farther behind in reading.  I have tried having her write them and constructing stories etc but when you show her the flash card she just shrugs and says, "I don't know."  My sister says, "Well, its just kindergarden."  Um, no, this is part of the foundation to the rest of her education.  

If anyone has ANY ideas please share.  I am at my wits end.

Thanks!

Hello, I am not yet a "actual" homeschool mom yet however I do have a two year old and a one year old and I have been doing ALOT of research about homeschooling. I have read alot of good reviews about the book "teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352315006&sr=8-1&keywords=teach+your+child+to+read+in+100+easy+lessons

I also know my mother in law had to pull my husband out of school when he was in 3rd grade because he couldnt read. He had dyslexia and reading still is one of his least favorite things to do. The only thing he usually reads is information on the internet about politics, job openings and the Bible.. My mother in law tells me she had to sit on him to get him to read to her! (dont worry...hes a really muscular guy). Anyway I dont have any firsthand experience on teaching a child to read but I plan to purchase the book and try when my son is three. However if he is not ready I will not push him. He already loves to sit around and mimick me read. My one year old on the other hand is a little bit different.....anyway I hope this information will help you! I'll pray you are able to get the answers you need

If you are going to leave her in that school and just want to do some extra work at home, I would try to make it fun.   If she likes to play games there are all sorts of them arround for site words.  You can make many of them yourself.  Search for File Folder Games for some ideas on making them yourself.  You can make them with the words she is learning in school.  You can also add site word cards into most games.  If you are playing chutes and ladders, draw a card, read the word and then you get to roll the dice.

If she is the ants in the pants type of girl, you can put the site words on the floor and have her jump onto them.  You can say the word and she jumps to that word, or you could make a maze of words on the floor and she jumps onto the ones she can read. 

I'm sorry to say it but the teacher is right.

It will "just click one day."  Not all children learn to read at the same time.  I have never had my girls in the school system.  They are now 15 and 13.

My oldest read her first books at 3 yrs.  I assumed my youngest should be doing the same or close to that.  It didn't happen.  She loved to listen to stories but reading was not her cup of tea.  It was too hard, she would say.  I worried about her daily.  Well, that was wasted time because around third grade she found a book that she couldn't put down and she has been reading full force ever since.  She reads twice as much as my oldest.  She never goes any where without a book in hand.  As I type this, she is sitting next to me, reading!

I can't express enough - relax.  The more pressure on her, the hard it will be for her to "get it."  The best thing you could do for her is read, read and read to her.

Following along with you, as you read aloud to her, will help a lot. 

My sister's son was the same way so I know my daughter isn't a fluke.  ;o)   He wouldn't have anything to do with reading until 2nd grade.  Both my book loving sister and BIL were wondering where this boy could have come from.  Then he found a Magic Tree House book and he hasn't stopped reading since.   Like my daughter, he will sit and read before turning on the TV.

Wishing you both the best of luck!

So not to confuse you more, because they all have good advice.  But my son, now seven, at that age would say the same thing.  I came to realize that it was more than just not remembering.....how do I say this...he was Lazy he knew i would tell him the word eventually and Alot of it was he got too tired of always getting it wrong,and me pushing him harder and harder and my frustration and worry just made him "forget" more and more.  It's a lot of pressure for some kids. Even worse if there are groups of kids with some "catching on" and others not......Don't let her begin to feel she is not smart.  Every child has weaknesses and strength.  We still struggle with reading but we are almost to the point of starting 3rd grade math.  Which makes me glad we do homeschool so I can help where he is weak, but continue to challenge on those subjects he does well.

 One game that we played which worked real well and is SO EASY  was I made my own flash cards of words that he should be learning/know and we played "slap the card"  Just turned card over one at a time, race to see who can slap it first...whoever slaps it has to say the word, if they get it right it goes in "their pile" if wrong it goes back into the deck. I would let him slap those words he did not know and beat him to the ones he did so that it looked like I was at least trying to beat him.

The others are right that it will just click and if you are making too much about it it will only push her away and put her further behind, and worst of all make her HATE reading.  If it makes you feel better I was right where you are and was almost about to give up on homeschooling and put him in school.....I'm so glade I took a breath and worked on staying patient and calm; he did start "getting it" be we have struggled through Kindergarten and 1st grade yet now he is actually picking up books and reading on his own.  Keep in mind it is important they learn to read but I think they need to feel successful.  If they feel to much pressure, if it's to hard or are pushed to much than they will never enjoy reading and that is SOOOOO much worse than being a bit behind. Pay attention to your verbal and nonverbal cues it really can have an impact on why she is not "remembering" .

PS 100 easy lessons is great if you have one who like to "read" .  I tried that and about a dozen other curriculums that were very $;  in the end  we ended up using BOB books (silly and build on each other so they feel successful) and Learning Pathways much simpler and I loved LP because it also can be used as a spelling since it focus on phonetics first......

Check out Secret Stories on the Web.  It's for Teachers but I used some of the concepts. They really have you work on learning the main phonetics first, then putting it together.

Good luck

ok so please do not show my post to my mother.....I was typing fast so many errors.  My mother used to "correct" our letters home and then send them back with all the correctiongs........mmmmmm maybe that's why I hate English!  :)

Lisa,

Just wanted to share also that my son was in 3rd grade when he learned to read.  He is now in his senior year of Electrical Engineering and getting A's and B's. 

Because we homeschooled he didn't know he was "behind" and wasn't given any labels.

You can also tape words to things around the house so that she starts associating them together. It might look a little strange to guests, but it may help your daughter if she is seeing words all the time. She would be able to learn what the words look like at least and hopefully recognize them when she sees them in books and on paper. Things like door, window, chair, table, closet, and others are all easily labeled for a few months while she is practicing.

If the teacher used colors in the color words, you daughter may have been reading the color not the word.  If this is so, you may want to have her eyes checked.  Sometimes a vision problem can cause the letters to be confused or seem to be moving when the child looks at them.

This is an older post but I'll respond today anyway. I only see one recommendation for an intensive phonics program (Teach..100 easy). That book was too visually cluttered for my firstborn, it overwhelmed him. I did not like weird symbols in it either. I had started with that but switched to Alpha PHonics which is $20 new and is on amazon or sold through the author on the official website. It is a very plain easy to see black ink on white paper program. By the time they are at the end they are reading at end of grade 2 level.

Both my kids learned with that book, the oldest was ready for it half way through K which he was age 5 still then (Aug birthday). We did 8-15 minutes a day, stopped before he got frustrated, ended on a happy tone. We broke for summer then finished the last bit in start of grade 1. Second child was a natural reader having overheard these lessons he began reading at age 3. He begged for "the red book" = alpha phonics). I held that off til fall of age 4 year when older started homeschool, then tried to go slow bc I wanted him to still be a little kid and not rush formal learning but he would have none of it. He demanded 10 lessons a day bc he remembered the reward near the end with my older one where after 10 lessons he got an ice cream cone. So that one did 10 lessons a day and he was a whiz so it took 40-50 minutes a day and he was happy and flew through it.

A similar program to Alpha PHonics is Phonics Pathways which  is recc by The Well Trained Mind and is about $35. The costs of $20-$35 for an entire year of lessons is dirt cheap.

I hate hate hate sight reading only and there is proof that it just plain does not work. I would be irate to pay any kind of a private school that uses outdated sight reading only. But that is just me.

A note on how my kids turned out and what that reading instruction showed about them. Both my kids are still HSed and never went to school, just co-ops and things in the last few years. My 15.5 year old wound up being a kid who likes to have me sit by his side and teach him. He still likes things slow and easy especially if he hates the material (chemistry high school) or finds something challenging. He wound up having some LDs which the doctors blame on multiple cases of Lyme Disease, which started at age 3. The younger has always been a fast and easy learner. Tell him something once and it is memorized and learned. He flies through lessons and has worked above grade level on multiple subjects for years. In the co-op environment he has adapted to a traditional school way fairly well. He did hate a co-op we joined that did a lot of busy work and worksheets and really stupid stuff that was a waste of time yet took up too many hours a week. He also has a low tolerance for sitting in a class when the class has to wait for the slowest kid to catch up etc. I am explaining this because the things I saw in teaching reading to each kid has remained true to their learning preferences right though age 15.5 and 12.5.

Good luck.