Reading Rose

 

I have mentioned before that Rose is not a particularly early reader, like some of my kids were. She is also not super late. She turned 7 in June and while she doesn't read well, she is making steady progress. One of her problems is she gets frustrated easily when she cannot figure out how to sound something out.  Another problem is that she often would rather be doing something else than work with me on reading.

This week I took 3 kids to the orthodontist and had to run by Goodwill on the way home to drop off some stuff, and we were going right by Five Below, a store where everything is cheap, and I decided to hop in there to buy some bribes for the three littles ones. Bribes in the form of plush toys because they all three of them adore plushies.

I came home and showed them to the three youngest, and told Rose that if she read 15 little books, word for word, with no help from me, she would get to choose a plush toy.

She could only do 4 books a day, and she has worked hard and tomorrow has to do one book and will get her plush toy.

She actually reads better than I thought. Now these are EASY books -- short vowel sounds, but she does know some sight words and when she is really working at it, she can figure out a lot.

The truth is that my darling is often not really motivated to work hard. So yeah, she's doing well with a plush toy dangling in the near future!

I bought five or six plushies and while Sarah and Daniel can also earn plushies (by doing other academic things) I will have at least a few remaining for Rose to try another 15 books. They will be progressively harder and so it'll be more of a challenge BUT I think she'll do well. She really is pretty good at it. She just needs to be motivated properly!