August 22

Oy.  Rhyming with a pre-K kid. Absolutely not as easy as it sounds. It's what nightmares are made of.

She did so good for the first 4 words.  She got cat, pat, hat and bat right out of the gate. Rat and mat were a little harder to come by.

At first sign of frustration, I made her get up from the table and do a few things to reset her brain.  When she came back, I told her to just sit quietly and think about the letters of the alphabet for a few minutes and see what she could come up with.  Nothing.

My next step was to get her alphabet flashcards out and have her randomly pick a card and try to make a word out of the letter plus the "at" on the worksheet.  My original thinking here was as follows:

1. We only had to come up with 2 more words.  I know that's not a good way to look at it since she obviously needs practice, but we'd been at this for about 40 minutes by this time.
2. If she pulled out cards that didn't work, she'd see that not all letters can be put at the beginning of a word to make it rhyme.
3. She'd be able to use this tactic later on if she still has trouble.

Well, folks, this tactic wasn't as successful as I'd hoped.  The first letter she pulled out was I.  She laid the card down in front of "at" and then just looked completely perplexed.

I encouraged her..."Try to sound it out."

She tried...(making a short I sound)..."I....I...I...IGLOO!!!"

My first reaction as to either laugh out loud or yell and scream.  DON'T WORRY.  I did neither.

So I asked her, "Does igloo rhyme with the other words you've written?"

She said, "No, but I plus "at" can't make a word."

WE WERE GETTING SOMEWHERE!!!

We continued through the alphabet cards and while it took another 20 minutes to come by 2 actual words (our luck with pulling out viable consonants that day was horrible), she eventually started to understand that some combinations of letters just simply don't make words.

I'm not sure if my fragile state of sanity can take helping a kid with homework for many more years to come. :)