One of my favorite teaching sites...

Right now, my printer is working really hard.  It's printing off a bunch of phonics worksheets from one of my favorite sites that's of course--free :)  Yay!  The site is: http://www.carlscorner.us.com/  I realized that I had good goals for my middle daughter's phonics instruction this fall, but it has fallen far short of what I'd hoped becuase I didn't have an assembled packet for each week.  My plans were good ones, but the execution needed help.  

So, this morning I set to work to get things together.  I came across an older boxed set of Hooked on Phonics, levels 2-5 at a book sale last week.  I did use the newer version of Hooked on Phonics with her already, but I need to accompany the sounding out with writing out the sounds.  So, we're doing the reading form the older books (which she hasn't seen before) and then following it up with worksheets from carl's corner.   (There's also a link to little book lane on the site that links to other blend worksheets from the same creator and are free as well!)

Sometimes children need extra reinforcement.  But, it doesn't make sense to me to repeat the exact same workbooks.  I love Explode the Code and it's a wonderful series. It covers all of these blends that I'm working on with her.  But, she needs me to engage with her and I missed realizing that the first time around when she did all of this in Explode the Code.  She needs me more than I thought she did.  

I'm excited and encouraged.  Even as I sit here writing this, she asked me how to spell "roof".  She broke out the word into sounds and I asked what letters make the "oo" sound.  She answered oo and spelled her word herself.  It sounds like a little thing, but it's a big thing when you have a girl who two months ago would only write a sentence and now just wrote two pages retelling the story of The Three Little Pigs with a new twist.    It's been eye opening for her and me as I've begun to continually explain everything to her--explain the spelling and grammar rules in context and in simple language.  Over and over.  It's clicking and she recites the rules back to me.  There are several spelling errors in the story she just wrote, but now she knows that she can spell and will learn how so she's willing to try.