Reading

I received both of the books I ordered on "teaching kids to read". The first left me going ...meh, whatever. The other I really like. It has a horribly cheesy title, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". After reading all the forward information for parents, which took awhile because of numerous interruptions by both a three year old and her father, I was impressed. (The interruptions were fine. It just meant that I read the material in three sentence snippets.) We started today. She actually made it through most of the first lesson fairly quickly. We'll do two, ten minute sessions tomorrow.

Algebra app....VERY COOL, even for toddlers

I ran across the COOLEST app yesterday. It teaches basic algebra through a very addictive game. I "played" all the levels and was blown away by just how intelligent the game design is. Bravo to the folks who created it. And, Rachel was able to complete the first level by herself. Yes, a three year old could play it. No, she has no clue it has anything to do with math. Go here: http://www.dragonboxapp.com/

Reading...the time has come.

I've been very laid back about reading with Rachel.  David and I want to instill in her a love of books and stories.  I think we've done that.  We read 4-10 books a day with her.

She is starting to recognize words she sees, so I've ordered a couple of "curriculum" books in order to get a bit more methodical about teaching her to read.  One is a phonics book that was highly regarded on the forum Well Trained Mind.  The other one I've seen around and just wanted to take a look at it.  It divides "learning to read" into 100 short lessons.  That would be useful for Rachel since she is still so young. 

I am going to aim for 20 minutes a day of "formal" work on reading.  This will be in addition to our leisure reading.  I'll split the 20 minutes into two sessions, one in the morning and one at another time.  With summer coming on, we can easily do it in the afternoon since we won't have playschool to contend with.