Update on Melody

I have had about 36 lessons with her in total already, and have already brought her up to doing Rabbit words in syllabication, teaching her the 1-1-1 rule using the "ing" suffix, besides the floss rule as well. In terms of phonograms, we have finally completed the basic level, bringing her up to "tch".

We had to stop for the whole month of June because after I came back from church camp, one of the kids came down with chicken pox, and because Melody has an infant sister, I didn't want to risk spreading chicken pox to their family. In the end, it was all in vain because I gave Melody all of one lesson before she ended up getting chicken pox anyway (not from me though) and we had to stop lessons again for another two weeks.

A big development was that she was officially diagnosed as Dyslexic with DAS. She also has Language Processing Disorder, for which she will have to see a Speech Therapist as well. So I will continue to give her lessons until she joins DAS officially. Mother B had initially asked whether I would continue to teach her, but I advised her to allow Melody to go for classes with DAS as it would do her good to come into contact with other children who also have dyslexia... and perhaps she might be more encouraged if she saw that others are struggling as she is, but also trying despite it... and the group situation might give her enough push to keep her going when the going gets tough, since she has a propensity to start whining and bargaining when confronted with yet another new rule or sound that she has to learn. I hope to finish teaching her the "magic-e" sounds before we stop lessons... and if we can take her to the reptile words in syllabication, that would be awesome, but we really have to see how fast she can go given the 6-week break she has had (with the exception of the one lesson in between).