BOB Books

Daphne will be five years old in May, so I am really starting to get serious about this whole homeschool thing. And by that I mean agonizing over whether or not I really should do it, and changing my mind at least ten times a day, and then figuring if I AM going to homeschool then I better start deciding exactly HOW... and then feeling completely overwhelmed and confused and telling myself to forget about it because "there's still time"...

BUT! I have decided on one thing. And it's kind of a big thing too - how to begin teaching Daphne to read. I've been dragging my feet on this one. I wanted to wait. I thought she should be a little older. But she has mentioned several times now that she would like to learn to read, so I'm kinda thinking maybe she's pretty serious about it? So maybe I should be too. Plus she knows her letters - capital and lower-case - and she mostly knows the sounds they represent. So it's just the logical next step. Why hold her back if she's ready? Isn't that one of the main advantages of homeschooling?

Not that I haven't looked into it. And researched different methods and read multiple books on the subject. But I just wasn't sure yet how to do it. And I didn't want to start and stop different reading programs until we found "the right one" because I was afraid that might spoil the whole experience for both of us. And with this being our first, official, formal, sit-down educational experience, I did NOT want to spoil it!

I knew what I wanted: a simple, phonics-based approach, but not too boring. About 10-15 minutes per day. Truly READING pretty much from the start, from actual books, because I'm sure that would be more motivating. And not to seem cheap but I wanted to spend as little money as possible. Because really we're just talking about putting letters together, right? I could do that myself with a pencil and a blank piece of paper - but I wanted it to be a systematic approach, to be sure there weren't any holes in her learning, and I didn't feel confident that I could just make all that up as we went along, without causing confusion and frustration for both of us.

So I finally found something that seems like a good fit. The BOB Books. I first saw them at Costco maybe three years ago and was tempted to buy them all up right then and there, especially when Steve said I should go for it. But then I thought about how they'd just be sitting on a shelf for a couple years and it seemed like a waste. And I'm glad I didn't because even though I want to use them now - HELLO! They are available through our library! I love our library. So I put them on hold and I am pretty excited to get started. Even better - I found this lady's website, with complete lesson plans for every single one of the books! Amazing. I love benefiting from someone else's genius.

(Okay so I just realized that the BOB Books available through our library are all bound into one giant book for each set of 12. Not sure how I feel about that. I like the idea of her holding one individual story and reading it through completely and feeling like "Hey! I just read an entire book all by myself!" If they are all bound together she'll have to read 12 stories before getting to "the end". Hmmm... I knew it was too good to be true!)