We've been working on reading and it's going pretty well. We're currently trying, "Teaching Reading in 100 Easy Lessons". DD's been devouring it, however, I've noticed it's making her forget her sight words. As I feared, teaching a phonics type skill has made her slow and she focuses on each letter sound and not the whole word. I knew that would happen, but dang, I still hate it. LOL So, we did a big project for learning sight words. It's our Tree Of Hands! I write 3-4 sight words on hand cut-outs and put them up on the refridge w/magnets. As she learns them, she gets to put them up on her Tree of Hands. As you can see, we've just started. LOL But, it's going really well!!!

Here she is painting the tree.
http://www.amitymama.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=929260

Here it is almost complete. For those of you who *know* of my dd's obsession with a certain color, yes, the tree is purple. LOL
http://www.amitymama.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=929264

And, here it is hung up on the door to our basement. Sorry the picture is at a poor angle, but this door is in a corridor between the homeschool room and the work out room. I could not get a better angle.
http://www.amitymama.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=929267

I'll let you know how it goes as we continue our project. I hope it does the trick. And, even if it doesn't, we had a great time making it! LOL

What a great idea!

In addition, to support this, you could get a few of the earliest emergent readers at the library for her to put in her stack of readers. Some of them are very heavy on the sight words. It might help her to keep remembering them even as she sounds out new, phonics-based words.

(We found lots of readers w/sight words when dd wanted to read but emphatically did NOT want to sound anything out. LOL! She is getting over her phonics aversion though.)

Cool idea!
We always make a tree like that in the fall, sometimes we would write our thanks on them.
But never thought to use one every day for learning.. duh! Thanks for sharing!

You have a workout room AND a homeschool room AND a sewing room, grr... I am just so jeaous of your life planning skills!
:p

Hope

Love the tree!! We do a "word wall" with her sight words on our season bulletin board -- I also have a "pocket chart" (when I taught school, the teacher store sold canvas rectangles with sturdy strips of clear plastic sew on for the pockets). I use the pocket chart to do our calendar every month & have the name of the months in Spanish & English.

I've also used the pocket chart with words to form sentences & to teach parts of the sentence later on. I think it could be easily duplicated using canvas or heavier muslin & clear vinyl strips sewn on.

btw... she looks so HAPPY to be learning!!

What a great idea Marcey!

Did she draw/design the tree herself? If so, I'm totally impressed, she is only 5 isn't she?