Wednesday, January 23, 2013

English or Maths?

I sometimes get the feeling I am going about this Early Learning thing all backwards.

Almost everyone focuses on reading. It is easy and most of the people who teach their child before school enjoy reading themselves. I love reading. I also love Maths. It has always been more important to me that Nikki love maths, because it is so easy not to.

Fortunately, Nikki is a Maths-y child. He has always loved numbers and counting. Encouragement is really not necessary - he begs me for his lessons! So our main educational focus has become Maths.

Unlike most early learners, Nikki can't read. He sounds out CVC words (which I have to remind myself is more than most children his age can do) but has shown no interest in memorizing sight words. Thus, if you give him a book he won't even try to read it.

This frustrates me, since I have done a lot of sight-word reading flashcards (primarily using LR) and he never shows any memory of words that I know he's seen HUNDREDS of times! (Unlike all the other children who read books at 2) So we're doing occasional Reading Bear and going through the motions of Little Reader and I'm planning lessons around a more traditional reading primer with the hope that it will make a difference.

So, for now, Maths is Nikki's choice. He is progressing easily through Saxon K and at this rate will be finished with the elementary textbooks before he starts school!

All I can do is pray that he'll be reading sentences by then, too!

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