We played sight word games together each day and then she would do an activity on her own with her sight words. On Fridays I would go through the words with her and see if she knew them. Any words she did not know yet were practiced again the following week, plus the next ones on the list.
When spring comes along, we sort of go into unschooling mode. I made a summer reading chart for Princess with rewards for reading so many books. She was excited to get her rewards and worked hard to fill in her reading chart. She also did Reader’s Theater with her best friend over the summer. That was the closest we got to practicing her sight words.
A couple of times over the summer I went through her sight words list with her and found that even without actually practicing, she was still increasing her knowledge of sight words! By the beginning of September she knew them all! What was supposed to take 3 years to learn, she did in only 7 months! That was without actually studying the sight words during the last 3 months!
I have read books written by Raymond and Dorthy Moore that explain that children who wait longer to start their formal education have no problem catching up and actually learn much faster then most children who start earlier. Now I realize that it was probably a good thing that she did not start learning sight words until she was 8 years old! What I thought was my failure to teach her properly turned out to be a blessing!
Has that ever happened in your homeschool? Did you ever feel like you messed up, only to find out that it was actually a blessing in disguise?
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