All Posts by Marilee Senior

Whether in school or at home, learning to read can be stressful for both parent and child. More often than not, the problem lies in the teaching methodology rather than with the child who is learning to read. Finding the best method and teaching to your child’s strengths will yield results. (click title to read more)

​Could Conventional Reading Methods Cause Children to Struggle Teaching Sight Words Conventional methods have children memorize sight words. That’s because conventional thinking believes, like Dolchsightwords.org, “Many of the 220 words in the Dolch list, can not be “sounded out”, and hence must be learned by sight”.The Dolch Sight Words, commonly used by parents and teachers, […]

Could this be one of the reason our children struggle to read? I certainly think so. Below is an abstract from the “Journal of Learning Disabilities” that addresses teacher preparation and textbook content with regard to linguistic knowledge. There is also a link to the full article. While there are many excellent early elementary teachers doing […]

​​​​​ This 4 minute video from The Children of the Code Project contains a couple of movie clips with American Indians.  It really demonstrates the magic of reading.  Children of the Code has over 70 videos and interviews from leaders in the  fields of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics, orthography and many other fields related to understanding the code.  Visit […]

Enhancing Relationships through Reading Goo and coo. Read a Rhyme.Make the most of babies time.Wiggle toes; float boats in baths.Learning in between the laughs. March to music. Hear a sound.Sing it. Rhyme it. Dance around.Go beyond the alphabet. Teaching sounds they wont forget. We’ll show you what YOU do todaywill have an impact down the way.We make […]

I read with great interest this article in my Sunday (paper) issue of the New York Times. I think you will enjoy it also. It does give a look at both sides of the issue stating recent, and slightly older, research. One that particularly caught my attention is that several studies found that young children “whose parents read to them from an electronic book had lower reading comprehension than children whose parents used traditional books.”

In addition to this, I think we parents of children with Down syndrome recognize the need to encourage as much speech as possible. (click on title to read more)

What are some of the latest research studies saying about toddlers and screen time? (click title)

Teaching Pre-schoolers Phonogram Sounds Not surprisingly, my daughter-in-law, Mandy, teaches my four-year-old granddaughter phonograms.  She embraces “Wordy’s Way” by teaching Carley phonograms here and there throughout the day.  In fact, Mandy started by just singing the jingles to her when Carley was around 6 months old.  She did the gestures with the jingles, and Carley […]

Exit 18:Bonus Bend Phonograms Wordy Worm® Reading provides tools to teach the 72 most common phonograms.  Below is a short list of some less common phonograms, many of which come from Old English and Greek words.  Introduce these phonograms as your children encounter them in their reading and spelling words. mn mn may say /m/  I […]

“This is a little reading room Mark created for Jane under the stairs of their new house. It was his present to her for her second birthday. She sits in front of the Bose And listens to Katelyn read the phonograms CD ALL the time.