Happy Thursday, friends! I've seen quite a few "first day of school" posts from friends on social media, but the Wigglesworth girls have a few more weeks until school starts back up. As you know, R attended summer school this year, but you might not know that it was because she was struggling with reading. It's a strange thing, as someone who couldn't get enough of books, having a child (actually D struggled at this age too) who isn't fond of reading.

The last day of summer school, R came home with a note requesting that she continued to use the online reading program that they had used during the school year and summer school so that she could be as prepared as possible for second grade. I'm not going to lie, the note kind of crushed me. I'm sure it wasn't meant to, but it helped to make me feel like more of a failure when it came to getting her to read/enjoy reading. We read together all of the time, we have enough books to start our own library, and yet, R struggles with reading on her own.

When I asked her why she was having a hard time, she confessed that the words were harder for her to read because they were bigger. Watching her read, I can tell she just wants to be through as soon as she begins. She looks at the first letter (or first few letters of a word) and just says the first word that comes to mind that starts with that letter. For instance, one time she saw the word grape and said gravity instead. 

When  I get her to slow down she can (and will) sound words out and read them just fine, most of the time. So, I had to come up with a way to get her to slow down and read what is on the page and I wanted to encourage her with how she improves each time she reads, so I decided to have her make videos reading books. 

Every single day, she gets to pick a book, she grabs her tablet, and she shoots a video. You can tell that the girl has seen a few YouTube videos because she is constantly stopping the story to tell her "audience" to leave a comment or press the thumbs up button. It makes me giggle because, of course, she doesn't have a channel and we don't upload her videos. However, with her personality, she'd be a pretty great 'Tuber. 

This exercise has been working out pretty well for us. She's a lot less anxious about reading and doesn't fight us about having to do it so much anymore. Even though we've had her read to us, there's something to be said for her being able to watch the video after she records it. It seems that this has been both helpful with word recognition and fluency, which is a great relief. She may still be a little behind her friends, but I'm confident that she'll catch up soon!

Let's chat reading tips! What do you do to encourage your child(ren) to read more? Drop me a comment below or catch me on social media @mommysblockparty on Facebook or @beautyrepv on Twitter and IG.