Delicious Words

Life is so much fun when you see children or adults learn.  The 15 year old I last posted about is back in school and I am again tutoring him.  We took  December off and tutoring is getting started again.  I do not tutor the week school starts because the kids are tired and often on a sugar high from the Christmas and New Year happenings.  I am having the 15 year old read books to me.  They are simple.  The reason I am having him read them is that he can have success reading a book.  We read millions of cats by wanda ga'g. This is a good read because it allows success.  We began one book that was determined to be boring.  So we quit in the middle.  We do not need anymore boredom with learning.  It is ok to say I do not like a book and go to one we enjoy.
Another 15 year old that does not like to read was introduced to Ransom of Red Chief  by O'Henry.  The next time, he wanted to know if we were going to read anymore of that book, so we chose another story by O'Henry.  We are also working on his fractions and math.  It will be interesting to see what his grades will be.
I introduced a 6th grade girl to the delicious words of Anne of  Green Gables.  Her mom reported that her paper was fuller for school.
A  5 year old that is turned off learning melted when I told him that he was going to read the word cat in milliions of cats.  I told him cat was his word.  I read the rest and when I came to cat that was his word.  I do not know what happened that he is so afraid of  failure that he is afraid to try but we will see how he does.  He is already doing much better than when we started in September. He has had his second art class.  We have a wonderful art teacher in our town named Vada Weaver.  We went once before and he could only stay 40 minutes.  This week he had the confidence to stay an hour.  I had to tell him we had to go as class was over.  Sweet success.
Another young child about 7 liked the Chuck's Truck by Peggy Perry Anderson.  His words were Fat Cat Pat in this book.  He was excited to begin to understand he could learn to read.