What I WISH I'd known-DITHOR

[mrsrandolph]

Well,
My 2 oldest are in DITHOR. I wish I had thought to have them each read the SAME book at the SAME time, as their levels are close enough to have done that. But I can't afford duplicates at this point.

It would just take a lot off my plate to be doing a group lesson with them instead of 2 sep lessons. KWIM?

[pjdobro]

We have used the same book for both dc before just sharing one book. Mr. Poppers Penguins is one they both did. They just had to coordinate when each of them read it. Since it was only about 20-30 minutes of reading each day that was easy to do since they had other independent work that the other one could be working on at the same time. Other times they have each had their own book but we still did the lessons together. I find most of the time the lesson is somewhat independent of the book so we can cover it well together. If the lesson does require that we do something that is specific to the book that I have to help my dc with, then I sometimes do this with each of them individually, but most of the time we go ahead and discuss both books all together. Though the other dc isn't reading that book they still benefit from the flow of the discussion. The way it is with my dc too is they are constantly discussing their books with the other one so generally they have an idea about the book. Many times after one has read a book for DITHOR, the other one reads it for fun. Of course both of my dc are using the same level of DITHOR, level 4/5 right now. If they were in separate levels, there would be days that we would have to work totally separate. As it is, we work together most of the time. I admit, it has taken me several years to get my stride in DITHOR, but it flows pretty smoothly for us now.

[Leslie in TN]

We have decided to do that very thing this year. I am using the DITHOR book for their nighttime read-aloud, and then they do any assignments the next morning during school hours. Once or twice there have been days when I've done it differently (like "Read 1/2 and then stop to do this part of the workbook") but it doesn't happen too often. We've decided to always do the group project at the end of each genre, as well. So far it's going much more smoothly for us than in other years. What's great is that DITHOR is written to be so flexible so that we can find what works best for our families!

[Tansy]

maybe the Library could supply the duplicates? This year the library is supplying our Dithor books. one renewal is all we need.