h-i-t-s

Who would have thought that the hardest word in the English language to learn how to read is "hits?"

We had a rather volatile homeschool reading lesson today. It started out fine, then went downhill with the introduction of the word hits.

Gabe simply could not grasp the fact that h-i makes the sound "hi." Over and over again he said "ki" or "thi" or "shi" and then he would go back to "ki" - I think he likes that sound combination.

Once I thought we finally mastered "hi", I introduced "ts" and things got worse. He started saying "hid", "kiss", "kite", "hug", "said" and basically any other word he could think of.

I hate to admit it, but I completely lost my cool.

I backed up and reviewed the k and h sounds, but that wasn't really working. Then I drew a heart with the letter h next to it and kite next to the letter k. I thought the pictures would help give him clues to the letter sounds. I was wrong. The lesson was spiraling out of control. I was yelling "what does this say?" while pointing to an h and then "what does this say?" while pointing to a k. When he got it right a few times, I would add in a new factor, like the next sound, and everything he was just able to do was lost.

We both took a time out, me in the kitchen getting coffee, him in the bathroom to wipe his tears and nose, and then returned to the lesson. We got through it, but I'm pretty confident he still doesn't know a k from an h and an hour or so later I showed him the word "hits" again and he was clueless. The 30 minutes of pounding it into his head was pointless.

One thing we did both learn from our reading lesson today was I seriously lack the patience required to teach simple lessons to a child when the child isn't "getting it". When Gabe is catching on, we are a great team. We roll through our lessons, do reading, writing, math, story time, and science, with a few art projects thrown in there to keep things fun. However, when he doesn't understand something or just can't remember what he has already learned, tears fall, I get really frustrated and I thank God for teachers.