Free Reading

The Fairy-Princess turned 5 on October 19th of this past year. I hemmed and hawed over starting real "kindergarten school-work" with her last fall, but since she wouldn't have been able to go to public school yet (you have to be 5 as of Sept 1st) and she wasn't really interested in doing any kind of of structured activities....well that took care of that.  I'm all for the easier route and keeping things relaxed.

However, recently Fairy-Princess has been expressing a lot of interest in learning how to read, she loves hearing stories and absolutely loves making up VERY detailed and imaginative stories of her own.  No doubt she will be the next Louisa May Alcott, so we figured it was time to get her started.

Anyway, since April 19th will be her 5 1/2 birthday, I set that date as my "goal" as getting her started on something *a little* more structured.  We "school" year-round, (although I hate to use that word "school" since it seems like some of our best learning isn't "schooly" at all), however we do the "structured-stuff" year-round, choosing to keep things more relaxed all the time.

We had used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons  with the Social-Butterfly, but the Fairy-Princess scorns that book.

So, I started my quest for something "new".  She taught herself how to write upper-case letters all on her own, she'd been playing around on Starfall and we did the first three, free lessons on HeadSprout, however I felt we needed something more.

Recently, on a homeschool list I am on, I came across the website Lesson Pathways which lead me to Free Reading.  Now, I'm ALL about anything with the word "free" in the title.   Free Reading seems like a great resource, the lessons are all very clearly spelled out, they involve lots of "games",  printables for free picture cards and video's demonstrating each lesson.  I'm still not 100% convinced it is exactly what we need, but it seems like a great start.  

Yay...another great, frugal, homeschool find!  Once we actually get started, I'll report back with how we make out using it!