Reading

Ivy's ability to read has really impressed me lately. We have used a balanced approach (both phonics and whole language) in teaching her to read. Other than using our home, local and Christchurch City libraries, I have purchased an American phonics program which had been recommended by the mother-daughter homeschooling advocates, Jessie Wise and Susan Wise-Bauer (The Well-Trained Mind).

Ivy has been completing the exercises in the Explode the Code series and is currently on book4.5. She also reads readers and other stories. She is able to decode texts while comprehending the content.

The day before yesterday, Ivy was able to read a lengthy story from a book called The Magician of Puddle Lane and Other Stories by Sheila K. McCullagh. I was interested to see the reading level of this book to be able to gauge where Ivy's reading is at. So, I used the Fry Readability Formula to determine the average grade reading level of the story. This is something that is fairly easy to do and it gives you a good idea of the difficulty of particular texts- which can differ greatly from what a publisher states as the reading level. I was surprised to see that the story, about a girl receiving a magical box for her birthday, scored at the 6th grade reading level. This blew me away. I had no idea that Ivy's reading was that good! She is only 5, turning 6 in late December, and a 6th grader, if my memory serves me right, is 11 years old!

Things seem so normal to us as home schoolers in our own little world of learning until we compare what we are doing with others out there. What a great achievement for Ivy!