Alan & Brenda Leonard

on 7/26/02 17:13, Joyce wrote:

>Kids, as far as I can tell from the stories people relate, figure out
>phonics as a side effect of trying to read.

That was my experience. A year or so ago, in a more teachy moment, I tried
to teach Tim phonics. I was trying to get him to play with letters and
sounds with me. Dumb idea. He already knew many of the sounds, and the
ones he didn't know, he didn't care about.

I think there's a bit of egotism in the idea of teaching kids. We need to
feel needed in that way, or something. It can be tough on our ego to
realize that our children don't need us to teach them. When they desire it,
they learn it. But then, I learn things all the time that I need to know to
do something else. Why shouldn't my son?

Welcome back, Joyce. Nice vacation?

brenda

Fetteroll

on 7/26/02 4:47 PM, Alan & Brenda Leonard at abtleo@... wrote:

> Welcome back, Joyce. Nice vacation?

Thank you! Yes it was. It's always nice to visit the family. And it's
especially nice since I loaned my father a stack of homeschooling books last
year to read. Now he doesn't even make the couple of concerned comments that
he used to ;-) (I suspect he didn't even read them.)

Joyce