Bingo Brush Up

The girls went back to school this week. Emma the Brave was eager; she was missing her friends. Mouse, on the other hand, would have been content with another week of holiday, or two for that matter.  She loves school when she's there but, given the choice between a home and the classroom, her preference is clear. Who can blame her? I'd pick my kitchen over the grocery store any time. 

Back to school means back to homework and not even Mouse is exempt.  For the first time in over two weeks, she and I sat on the couch to read her new book from English school.  Prior to the break she'd been plowing through these readers with little difficulty. Between her expert decoding skills and ever-growing list of sight words, listening to her read had been a quite pleasant experience. Wednesday afternoon was altogether different. She stumbled over the simplest words making loads of 'close but not quite' errors. When I tried to help, she yelled at me to stop. How frustrating!  She was in desperate need of a phonics refresher but didn't want to hear it.

On the computer I printed out five 3x3 grids based on the Jolly Phonics list of letter sounds. I printed them a second time and cut them into individual squares placing these inside a little bag. Mouse and I went on to play Phonics Bingo.  The goal: to get three letter sounds in a row (vertically, horizontally or diagonally) before your opponent.  Mouse beat me fair and square two times in a row and, in the process, got her much needed review.  The next day we sat down to read another new English book and, wouldn't you know it, her decoding had improved dramatically. Great job, Mouse! A little review goes a long way.