to read is to fly

The sprogs have been doing a lot of Reading Eggs/Eggspress over the past week or so.

Little has made good progress on her comprehension gym lessons. She spent a long time on level 3.1, as that was where she started, and then she got discouraged because she got a few questions wrong on a  couple of lessons and felt she wasn't able to do them at all. However, once she managed to get those lessons done, she has spend through level 3.2 in about 3 weeks, and is now on level 3.3. She's also been exploring the Quote Quests, which she refused to do before because they have games on that are timed, and she panics when she has a limited time to do something, even something that is supposed to be fun. We've been slowly working on her doing the games calmly rather than panicking and then becoming upset when she doesn't manage to do it.
We also signed her up with an email address. We were reluctant to do so as technically she is not supposed to have one until she is 13. However, she really wanted to be able to keep in touch with various friends via email, so we created her an account and added some contacts and she has been emailing them about every other day. As part of this progression she has also been doing the Dance Mat Touch Typing which she's enjoyed in the past.

Small has also made good progress on Reading Eggs. He is much more confident now with the idea of sounding out words and is starting to recognise some of the common words, but we still have a lot of work to do on that front. Even simple words like 'in' and 'is' he sounds out before realising what they are. I'm really pleased he is at home and not at school... I dread to think what he would have been like had they been forcing him to learn faster than he is comfortable. I've mentioned before what he thought when he left school - that he couldn't read, it was too hard and made his head hurt. He has not made any progress since then in terms of what he can read, but his self-confidence is much higher, and he no longer believes that reading is the worst thing ever, and I think that is more important. I don't actually care when he starts to read "properly", as long as he is comfortable with what he can do, and feels good about reading as an option. It's also has no impact upon his ability to learn - he just does it all by watching and listening rather than reading.

Tiny has been dabbling in the very early Reading Eggs lessons. We have now covered m, s and t, along with the sounds 'am' and 'at'. A while back we did a little letter M lapbook, and I think we may do another two for S and T, with the intention that eventually we'll have a whole alphabet. I'm not pressuring her - it's all self-directed. Yesterday she requested to have a go on Reading Eggs, and then did 2 lessons with very little help from me.