Christian did some very good reading today and I made a comment to him about it. He read pretty fluidly, didn't guess at words, and actually took the time to work through tougher words, and asked the meaning of a couple words he didn't understand. Anyways, he still said he hates reading and I said I don't know why he keeps saying that when he is continuing to improve. He said he hates that he is getting better at it because he might actually start to like it. *Gasp*
I was shocked he even admitted that much. I don't have any high hopes that his intense hatred for reading will turn into a love for reading anytime soon, but I do hope he will end up enjoying it at some point. I know everyone is different. My sister didn't struggle with reading, as far as I know, and she didn't enjoy reading until she was a teenager. I just hope the intense program we are using, along with his audio books, will help to repair the damage done over the years and help him to stop seeing books as evil.
I was tutoring both kids four days a week, but we have changed our schedule for the summer. You are supposed to do 2 hrs a week minimum and I was having to do 30 minute sessions 4x a week because they could not pay attention for more than that. Somewhere along the way, our sessions have stretched to an hour, so I have been doing both kids for an hr each 4x a week. It has been very draining for me on top of everything else going on around here. So, I decided we would go to only one kid a day, so each kid will get the minimum 2 hrs a week (with no tutoring on Wed). It will make it go slower, but they will still be making progress and we will still be moving forward. But it's summer and I am trying to make it more enjoyable for all of us. I feel SOOO much better only tutoring one child a day and it's much more manageable. I don't feel as overwhelmed and I feel a little more sane, lol. Realistically, we will have to keep this schedule well into the next school year because of the baby coming in the fall. But the important thing is that they continue to progress, and I'm sure they will.
We are all doing well with this schedule and I can't stress how much I love love love this program. I would recommend it to anyone with a struggling reader. We are still in the beginning of Level 4 and I can already see why they call this level the "payoff level", it is amazing to pull apart words and watch your kids learn all these decoding skills that they just couldn't get before. Right now, we are going over how to divide words into syllables and how to tell whether the syllable is "open" or "closed" and which sound the vowel will make. We start out doing it with letter tiles, then on paper, and now Christian can already do it in his head. He seems to find it all interesting and challenging and no longer resists doing the lessons. I think he is finally starting to see that it is benefiting him, though he won't admit it. There are studies that show the brains of dyslexics before they receive appropriate reading instruction and their brains after they receive it, and there are actually new pathways and connections that are formed in the brain that weren't there before. It's amazing.