| I'm not terribly worried about the reading programs working or not. My son is very motivated and as any good teacher knows, that is half the battle. He has taught himself the abc's and is working on the sounds of the letters. All I'm aiming to do is give him a formal boost in the right direction. I have a feeling he'll be reading before too long with out any direction. He looks at words and tells me the sounds of the letters in there. I've been teaching him some of the rules I know- two vowels together work together and usually name the letter. Later he'll point it out to me 'look mom two e's' and he'll make the long e sound. Then we'll look at the f and the t and I'll try to help him tie it together. Obviously I think phonics is really the way to go with reading. For a lot of reasons and if you want those teacher reasons, I'll be happy to share them with anyone. All the teaching reading classes I took says that reading isn't a natural-by-osmosis event- that kids have to work at and there are many different steps that occur before the child learns to put sounds of letters together with squiggles on the paper together with meaning to come up with reading. It isn't going to happen overnight, I understand that and so does he. But I think he feels better knowing we are doing something to make the impossible possible. I agree, we can't fix everything- but I can help him in this regard. What I'm looking for is some well thought out wordless picture books or else some books that have the repitition of one or two or three words over and over again. I have some wordless Carl books about a dog that takes care of a little girl. It's very cute. I have a cute book about a little monkey that shouts boo at everyone he sees until they all shout boo at him. Only one word. My son has the word memorized and he 'reads' the book to me. I found one on the internet the other day that came highly rated- The Gray Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher. I was hoping that other women/men out there with children would glance through the books they have and suggest some good wordless books that he could take to bed with him so he can make up his own stories or some repitition books that are simple and will help him feel like he's 'reading'. Ginger | 
