Teaching Timothy to read

I am almost finished teaching all six of my children to read. I have used the same phonics book for my six kids that my mom used to teach me and all seven of my siblings. Professor Phonics Gives Sound Advice is a simple little book, but it's become quite a fixture at our house. We are actually on our second copy of it, as the first one disentegrated after the first two or three children.

Now that I'm on my last time through it, I'm starting to feel a little nostalgic about being finished. While I've always enjoyed the cozy times of sitting next to my kids while we sounded out words together, I'm taking care to treasure this last time as I teach phonics to my youngest son, Timothy. He's seven, and he's a smart little guy who is in 1st grade this year. He's funny, too. He loves to linger over each word and talk about it. Sometimes he takes what seems like forever and I have to prod him to just read the word and move on to the next!

Today we've been doing "Hard and Soft 'C', Mixed." This is just a glimpse how it went.

"Since--I know that word! That's like how much money you have."

"Corpse--What's a corpse? A dead body? Is it like the whole body or just the bones? Is it just one dead body? 'Cause if it is, why would it have an 's' on the end? Shouldn't that be more than one dead body?

"Cellar--Those are the people that sell stuff to people. Like in the stores, they have lots of sellers that bring stuff so that other people can buy it."

"Carpet--Why does it have a 'pit' in it? It sounds like "armpit."

"Cyclone--Hey, if you take off the 'cy' you have clone, which is what men wear!"

"Princess--If you take off the 'ss' then you have prince! Wait, is prince and princess spelled the same except for the 'ss'? Wow, that information could come in handy!"

"Cistern--if you take the 'n' off the end, you have 'sister'! Okay, well then, if you take the 'n' off the end and then take the 'c' off the beginning and stick an 's' on the beginning instead, where the 'c' used to be, then you have 'sister'!"

"Cyclops--What's a Cyclops? So he's just like a regular guy except he has an eye in his forehead? Mom, there's no such thing as monsters. He would have to be a legend."