Last Day of School ... Finally!

Well yesterday was finally the last day of school for Lin. It seems like our school district is the very last one to let the kids out for summer, but the day finally came.

Here's Lin on her last day of school ... What a goofball:

And here she is back on her first day of school:

Hmmm, that's odd... She was a goofball back then, too...

Her final report card for the year is all A's!!! She's such a hard worker. We're so proud of her. But I did tell her that even though regular school is done for summer, she's still going to have school at home, only this time, I'm her teacher (insert evil laugh here). I really want to work on her reading and comprehension over the summer. Her ESL teacher was great and Lin really liked her, but Dave and I both felt like a lot of the work was over Lin's head. Her homework often consisted of worksheets on identifying adverbs and pronouns, present and past participles. But Lin's reading comprehension is at nearly a Zero. Doesn't she have to read first, then work on the proper grammar and stuff like that? Any teachers out there want to chime in? Cindy, I'm talking to you! :)

So anyway, here's my plan. First I will read to her. All the time. I want to read all kinds of chapter books, to both Lin and Ruby. My hope is that she will pick up on the language just by listening, like reading to a baby.

Second, I want Lin to read to me. At the library I picked up a handful of easy-reader books and I want to see how much Lin can read to me, and how much she understands. The frustrating thing for her will be that these books are very baby-ish. But she's got to start somewhere, right? And the quicker she can improve her reading at this level, the quicker we'll move on to more fun stuff geared for her age.

And third, workbooks and flashcards. I want to get workbooks starting at a kindergarten reading level and go through them from the beginning, starting with the basic building blocks of reading. And we're going to work on phonics flashcards and sight-word flashcards.

Now, of course, I'm not going to be some kind of reading ogre over the summer. It's just that I love reading so much and I want my children to share that joy. I cringe a little bit when she plops down in front of the TV or computer to veg-out. We're fine with letting her watch TV, but knowing that she is unable to sit down with a book -- either in English or Chinese -- well, it kills me. She's proven how smart she is when given a chance, and she didn't get that chance in China.

But that story will have to wait for another post...