DITHOR

[MomtoJGJE]

yes, I know I've been asking a million and one questions lately....

Jayden is reading well... she's doing great with the emerging readers. She would be finished, but I forgot we didn't do it a couple of days. Anyway, she's doing great with those... but I see that for DITHOR they have to read about 10 or so pages/day... there is no way I'm going to convince her to read that much in a day... she's just not that strong of a reader yet... if it's more than 4 or 5 pages she gets overwhelmed and discouraged.

So would you suggest for me to do the supplemental Emerging Readers or start DITHOR off half speed (like 30 days of reading, but 15 days of DITHOR if that makes sense.... one day of just reading and then one day of actually doing DITHOR) She doesn't particularly like to read, which I think is more of the problem than her abilities, so I don't foresee this changing anytime in the next 6 months or more even.

Or if you have another suggestion that would be great... I've also thought about just getting a 10 day or even 5 day book to begin with and doing it over the whole 15 days.

[Happy2bMommyof3]

We are new (just a couple of weeks) into DITHOR and it is a challenge even for my 3rd grader in Bigger who enjoys reading. I may not know enough yet to give advice, but if you did DITHOR half speed, I'd cut the reading to half each day i.e. 6 pages of reading one day then 4 pages of reading + DITHOR the next day...Not sure if this helps you, but I may have given myself some ideas!!lol

Heather

[Tansy]

Himm maybe I have been doing it wrong...
But I don't ever recall it saying the child must read 10 pages a day... (now I'm wondering if I've been wrong along) I'm looking at the work book and you take your books 1 2 or 3 of them and schedule them accordingly
1 long book schedule it to last the whole unit, a short and a medium, schedule one for 5 days and 1 for 10 days.
3 short books schedule each one for 5 days.

so if she can't handle more than 4-5 pages a day then pick a books you can schedule to last only 4-5 pages a day. Does that makes sense?
for example a 60-75 page book can be scheduled for all 15 days at 4-5 pages a day. or a 12-15 page book one week and a 40-50 page book for weeks 2-3.
or 3 books at 12-15 pages.

You best know your dc and their abilities you want them to develop a love for reading, so I would just reduce the amount of reading to be enjoyable and still get enough of the story to do the work in DITHOR.

does that make sense?
ANd never stop asking questions we love questions!!!

[MomtoJGJE]

It doesn't say to read 10 pages in a day, but if you divide a book over 100 pages long by 15 days you'll get large chunks of the book/day....

I understand about getting multiple books to fill the days, but I'm not sure Jayden would really do well with that at first... I also really like the ease of just ordering the packages, even though I know that's not necessary. I see where my post was confusing. when I said a 10 or 5 day book, I meant should I use one of the genres that has two books in the package and just use one of them during the whole 15 days (like if I did adventure first I could just get Stone Fox for the whole genre instead of doing that for 10 days and then Dolphin Adventure for 5 days) Or would it work out better to use a longer book and spread it out over more time... OR should I just let her strengthen her reading muscles a bit more before starting DITHOR? And I'm thinking more of in the long run than right now really. Like I know once she gets the idea down of DITHOR with doing less reading per day that she'll enjoy it more than just reading without DITHOR, but she's just not there with the amount per day yet.

The other idea I had earlier today was that I could just let her read 3-4 pages per day and I could also read some each day to her.... like split a longer book into 30 sections of reading and let her do one and me do one each day.

But I know she'd love the work associated with DITHOR and would read more readily for that than just to read.... UGH...

[Tansy]

I think if the book is going to be too large a chunk for her to read comfortably, you should do your best to get books on her reading lvl that will fit into the 5 page a day pattern. That you know she will enjoy. So if stone fox will give you a 5-4 page spread for 15 day schedule that is fine. Its made to be flexible so you can tailor it to your dc. Don't over think it

My dd1 hated Doing the work sheets so I alternated one month on DITHOR one month just reading for pleasure. We then did DITHOR over 2 years. She was so happy with that arrangement. So lots of solutions to your question.. You just have to pick the one you think will work best.

[my3sons]

We eased into DITHOR and really enjoyed that! Here is a thread where I explained what we did:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5788&p=42496

Now that we've taken our summer break and started Bigger Hearts back up again, we're doing everything full-speed (DITHOR too). It's going great! HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[MomtoJGJE]

Thanks for that Julie! That's exactly what I was meaning by doing it half speed with the reading every day!