Molly's Reading Program

So I decided to get serious about teaching Molly to read. I have had IEW's PAL on the shelf for months so I didn't have any excuses. This is the first actual reading program I have used. Sophie taught herself to read pretty much and the boys used explode the code books and lots of easy readers.  I figured I would give this program a try. 

 Each lesson starts with a poem. Evidently they thought people would be starting this program in the fall because the first poem is September. Even though it was January when we began we started with the poem September. I printed the poem on a page with lots of blank space and had Molly draw pictures to help her remember the poem.

She needed the pictures the first 5 or so days we repeated the poem but now can repeat it without the visual. As you move along in the lessons you look for words in the poem that you learned. We have already learned all the colors so she now can spot the color words in this poem.
We are on lesson 10 and will get to start a new poem in the next lesson.

We are doing the reading and the writing parts of PAL. We aren't doing All about Spelling like they recommend. Perhaps we will visit that program at a later date but for now there is plenty of work involved in the PAL reading and writing to keep Molly busy.

After reviewing out poem we usually do a short journal entry. I write what she tells me to write. Usually this is about something she likes.  "I like brownies. I like to eat them with milk." or "I like to play with Peezy. I like my cat". I try to get about 5 sentences from her and have to prod her a bit and try hard to get her to use some other phrase than "I like....." but she has a hard time thinking of anything else to say or any other way to say it. Oh well it will be fun to look back on what she says in this journal.

After the journal we usually review the letters and sounds they make before introducing any new letters.

 I will give her a sound and she writes the letter.

 Then we learn the two or so new letters for the day and the sounds they make.

 Next we are supposed to read a short little story, an Aesop's fable or something and talk about it. But honestly we tend to skip the story here and read one later.

Then it is game time.

 There is a whole bunch of these file folder games that we add letters to each lesson.

 These have been fun. She likes the games and it is fun for her to get to color or cut out parts of the games. We usually make them together as part of the lesson. She does all the coloring. I do most of the cutting and she does the glueing.

I think we have about 8 file folder games now. She does several of them during each lesson. 

There are some sight words as well as phonics that we work on with the games.

Then there is a little work sheet she colors and usually has to cut out words and past them in the right places on the page.

It takes us a good hour and sometimes more to make it through the entire lesson. That is why I often save the story for later and lately the worksheet is done later while the other kids are doing their math or something and Molly noise needs to be contained.

So far PAL reading and writing has been fun for us. It is far more time consuming than I am used to doing with my kids to learn to read. But Molly is loving the hour of undivided attention she gets while we do school with her. I definetly see improvement and she is seeing more words around her. The other kids like getting that hour break from their school work too.