The Dazzling Book Reading

Once upon a time, a beautiful little princess had not the faintest clue how to read. She couldn’t identify all the letters or their sounds. Sight words and phonics were nonexistent concepts. Her interest in trying to put any of it together was absent. The Queen, a new to homeschooling mama, panicked. What if she never go it or cared?

The Queen decided the one thing she could change immediately was giving the beautiful princess some motivation. She went radical and told the princess if she learned to read Fancy Nancy and the Dazzling Book Report perfectly, then the Queen would dye her hair pink and purple.

We got out the book.

We grabbed a pencil and developed a system. Words she knew got circled and those she didn’t got underlined. It broke the Queens’ book loving heart to write in a book, but she forged ahead with just a few shutters.

A chart was made representing the approximately 500 words in the book. Each goal of a hundred got marked off.

The Queen and the Princess would work on it for a week, and then move to other reading books and exercises for a few weeks, come back to the book, go back to others and repeat. Many times.

Slowly words came together and the Queens’ hair got scared. The Princess would whisper into the hair, as she improved, “are you scared yet?” Some days the hair was very scared, some days the hair thought it would never have to change colors, and truthfully, it was sad.

Then all the sudden, something clicked…and words started coming. And the Queen, had hope.

And last Monday, the Queen realized, this could really be the week. The words came fast and furious…Thursday the Princess decided to learn the rest by osmosis.