Hi Serena!
Glad to see you back in action again!
Drink lots of soup!
Thanks for the encouragement. Bel is so smart and she can figure out the different sounds on her own. And yes, she has definitely acquired the rules for life, even without knowing them herself. That's why English is probably more of a mother tongue to her than her Chinese.
Sigh... diligence is not our middle name! E.g. B will go, "Wow, yay! Fun games..." And then he loses steam very quickly. He feels that he reads too slowly hence he depends on his Mommy here to read out loud for him, though I think he's slowly perceiving words these days. The only grouse about his school is that the kids really don't do much seatwork, let alone writing. Homework is unheard of over here.
Hee... can you imagine? To inspire my son to write, I get him to write out a list of guests he wants to invite to his b'day. He can spell and write almost every of his classmate's name. And for someone who doesn't pick up the pencil everyday, that's pretty amazing, I find.
Back to writing, yes. Slowly and surely, I'm gonna come up with more contexts for him to practise writing, e.g. he's gonna be writing grocery lists for me soon. He has been trained aurally till now. Yap, aural intake of information is vast, but it goes away quickly too if it's not internalised. So I think I gotta start working on that part...
Gee... teaching literacy is a pain!!!
What I discovered last night when we were doing Valerie Bendt was that he was associating words to things he hear now, e.g. seal. Oh, I've seen lots of seals in the zoo before. Or block, yes that's the playing block, right, Mom? I wondered if he painted a mental picture. But that's what I like about Valerie Bendt. Very few illustrations. Like I said before, I need to do the listening/reading correlation and hopefully the mental picture of both entity and word will appear too in his head - as ALcovelet rightfully pointed out in one of her posts on her blog. (Watch me steal your idea there, Alcovelet

)
Hi Serenade!
Hmmm... phonics textbooks? Think I got to ask his teachers for help. Am not too sure if the teaching resources in his library are open to parents' access. But yeah, thanks. Will browse if I lay my hands on them.
Hi Alcovelet!
Yep, AVKO does look rigorous. But come to think of it, my dad used to teach me spelling that way too. I think I did have some luck with teachers. Some of my pri school teachers were pretty amazing souls. That's why I always thought highly of word families. Maybe I'm such a learner... e.g. patterns, sequences in spelling and particles of verbs, even for a foreign language.
Maybe that's why the way I view literacy is too marred by this one method. Anyhow, Valerie Bendt or WISE or AVOKO, I think I'm gonna integrate some comfortable programme for ourselves for now.
Btw, it's the weekend! Why are you all at home? Get out, get out and go and have fun!
Ok... other than Serena who's still recuperating, the rest of you have no excuse not to be out!
Heee... see you soon... This weekend is shorter here, adjusting to Daylight Saving Time. Will be losing an hour, thus an ultra-mini jetlag is coming our way! Yikes... K the sensitive one will have problems adjusting, again!
We're gonna go knock some pins down!
Hee... some, so no strike there!