Moon In My Room

My son has been fascinated with the moon, since he was a toddler. I think it started with the Scholastic video of the picture book, "Happy Birthday, Moon" (on the Goodnight Moon DVD). He loved the little bear, that talked to and shared a birthday with the moon. Another book we often read when he was little was, "Moon Plane", which combined his love for airplanes and the moon in one book!

Imagine how excited he was, when I brought home a moon to hang on his bedroom wall? It came with a remote control and at bedtime, we would lay in the dark, watching the moon move through all of it's cycles. It's been a couple of years, but he still loves this toy, which makes me believe kids of all ages will love this toy. School-age children who are learning about the phases of the moon will find it especially interesting.

KaiLan helped reinforce my son's love of the moon, with the Moon Festival episode. I'll never forget the day my 4-year-old told me he wanted to have a moon festival. He explained the entire itinerary that we needed to follow in order to have one: make lanterns, make moon cakes, take our laterns outside after dark and say hello to the moon, then celebrate by eating our moon cakes. He was so intent on having a moon festival, that I decided we should have one. We spent the afternoon shopping for supplies and decorating our laterns. Then, when my husband got home from work, we followed Grant's itinerary and we all had a great time celebrating our impromtu moon festival. Thank goodness it was a full moon on the day he decided to do this! How sad it would have been if there had not been a visible moon at the time?

Teaching Your Child To Read

A little over a year ago, I decided to research methods for teaching children to read. I bought a couple books on the subject. The one I found the most interesting and agreed with the philosophy was titled: "Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever".  Here's what I felt the basic premise of the book was: read outloud with your child as often as you can. When you read together, make it a comfortable, stress-free, special time, so your child associates positive thoughts about reading. Read and read and read with your child. By doing this, you will teach them that reading is worthwhile and enjoyable. This will foster a desire in them to want to learn to read.

It's a great philosophy and I have read to Grant since he was born. Sometimes for hours a day. I know that the process of reading with him everyday has instilled a passion for reading inside of him. However, something was still missing from the reading equation for us. The Reading Magic book seemed to imply all I had to do was read to him and soon, he'd be reading on his own. Feeling a little frustrated, I asked a friend, who is homeschooling, what she had used to teach her kids to read.  She recommended "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".

At this writing, Grant and I are on Lesson 30 out of 100. He can read the following sample sentences: "An ant can eat a seed. That seed is in the mud" from Lesson 29. I find this pretty impressive for a 4.5 year old, especially since a couple of months ago, he didn't recognize many written words.  This book helped fill that missing gap between desire to learn and how to learn that we were looking for.  I'm giving this book two big thumbs up!

Learning Sight Words

Grant's pretty particular about what DVDs he will watch, so I tend to check them out from the library or rent them on Netflix first, before buying.  However, I couldn't find "Meet the Sight Words" DVDs at either place. So, I took a big risk and bought the set without a trial run.

Fortunately, Grant loves these DVDs. The added bonus is that I never had to teach him how to read a single sight word. He just picked them up naturally from watching these DVDs repeatedly.

A similar product that I tried out about six months ago, but Grant refused to watch at the time, was Word World. I personally thought the concept was a great one and really enjoyed the videos. I think now that he is a little older and reading, he may be more interested in the Word World videos and will definitely give them another try!