Blending

Oh, how I love to home school my children. Although it is really tough some days, the rewards far out number them. One of my favorite things has been teaching my children to read. My two oldest are 11 and almost 10 so the days have been numbered since we have been blending letters. But, alas, our daughter is 4 and has been very eager to read so we started her this year. We were just working on reading one of her "Little Books" and it starts with just saying the blends of certain letters that will be in this particular book. That was easy enough...she did them all perfectly. Then it goes on to blending two letters together. The first one was "fi" . So we dutifully worked on it and got it down...like pulling teeth almost but she got it and we were off to the next page..."fit" so she sounds out each letter by itself and then I show her that the first two make up the blend we just did and all she has to do is add the last letter. Not hard right??? Well, somehow she started making the "o" sound and then emerged the "g" sound. And by this time I am thinking...lets leave well enough alone. She was already done with her daily work and finished with school for the day but she brought it to me and asked if we could read "her" books, and I obliged. But, instead of leaving well enough alone I tried in vain to get the three letter blend out of her before we put it up. So I said, Lets try saying, "Mom, the blend says 'fi'." Instead she ended the lesson with...

"Momma, the bin is flend"

I fell out and put the books up.