RACEWAY CHAMP

Arielle has hit a milestone this week that 4 of her older brothers and sisters have hit before her. She completed her phonics program – signifying that she knows how to “read”. BreAnne learned to read with Abeka.

We use a program called Sing Spell Read and Write. It is laid out as a raceway track. The children go around the first time and learn the sounds of the alphabet. The second time through there is 36 steps to complete (learning short vowels, digraphs, long vowels etc). This took Arielle a bit more time than typical but hey….it proves once again my theory that when children are ready to learn – they learn quickly. She began to really catch on to the mechanics of reading at the end of the summer. In the past 16 weeks she has zipped through the steps. One of my children finished the program at 6, one at 9 ½ and Arielle at 8 ½….truthfully all the older ones read well and love to read regardless of the age that they learned the skill. {Grin}Yesterday I assigned a book titled “Wagon Wheels” for her to read on her own. I meant for it to take several days…it’s a short chapter book. She read it all in one day. She’s on her way!

We celebrated by having a Raceway Party last night. She doesn’t care for cake so we made from Scratch *Moosewood Brownies and frosted them. We also gave her a trophy that says “Phonics Champ – Arielle G... – 2006”. She chose dinner (Pizza) and after she blew out her candles was prodded to make a speech. She looked right at ME, blushed bright red and said, “Thank you for teaching me”! It was one of those homeschooling moments a mom lives for.

*The kids weren’t all that thrilled with the brownies…real butter, unsweetened chocolate, 5 eggs….he suspects that Duncan Hines has ruined them for life. I plan to make these again with Semi-Sweet chocolate and see if they’ll like them better….I LOVE these brownies, myself…bad combination they don’t – I do.