Is it too early to be relieved?

After my little freak out/melt down on Thursday, I got an encouraging e-mail from a friend who had dealt with something similar.  She had several suggestions and I've already used a few... And guess what, they work!  Here are some of her tips:

"...Do things like: hide words and have a hunt like Easter, and make sure a lot of them are words she knows, and count all the ones she gets right and give her a smartie for each. Add more and more sight words that she needs to know every time you play so she works on learning them while playing. Another thing they love is writing in salt or sand. Use something like that so she can guess what you're writing as she watches and help her recognize them. Repeat the ones she doesn't get in the same sitting. Flash cards are great if you can make it fun. Let her flash them to you, too, so she sees the word and can tell you if you are getting it right. Pretend you need her help getting some that you are working on with her.

The one thing I would caution you about is having some future reward like...If you get all of your words or whatever she's working on, we'll go do so and so. That's too much pressure. Do it this way instead...when she does get something accomplished like knowing her words for the teacher, surprise her by saying she did such a good job we are going to get a slushie or something like that. Make the rewards immediate, just like spankings. It works just the same....immediate reward...bigger impact.


We played the "Alphabet Hide-N-Seek" (where I hid alphabet flash cards all over the living room) twice today.  The first time she didn't know 4 letters out of the 26.  And the second time Kennin only missed 3!

"U" is a hard one for her.

Making sure she finds them all!

Saying "N"

I got her report card on Friday and it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to stop working on this stuff with her, but I'm excited.

 And here's how we ended our night... Good night, y'all!