Reading Lesson

I've been struggling with how to teach Gabriel long vowels because most of the first grade reading books won't hold his interest (he may have the brains of a 5 year old, but I guess his attention span is more like that of a normal 3 year old). By the time the books get to long vowels, the stories are pretty long and everything I have tried has black and white pictures. So I am improvising right now, taking word lists from a set of books I have, and writing some of the sentences from the stories on the white board.

Gabriel really enjoys working on the white board, especially when he gets to erase things. Then, after we have done several word lists and sentences, I let him draw a picture on the board for one of my sentences. Today's sentence was "Ray will take a nap." Gabe set to work illustrating the picture, and he was whispering "This is his head. This is his stuffed animal. These are his eyes." I thought it was funny that he was whispering, so I whispered to Gabe, "You have to be quiet so Ray can take his nap." He looked at me and whispered back "Ray isn't real you know." He just cracks me up!