Homeschool Week 6

(October 9 & 10, 2012) We are really in a routine now. We are still working on handwriting, phonics (sort of, more about this later), sight words and literature. We love our Five in a Row curriculum for reading. Each book in the series (classic and contemporary children's literature) is read once a day for five days with enrichment activities each day. Often there is a big social studies component (usually geography and culture, but there are others in there too) and often opportunities for learning about different art techniques. It's wonderful! This week's book is "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" by Marjorie Priceman. There's a lot of social studies to this one, and we love it. Some days miss L wants to read it twice a day!

 

Here miss L is playing a word family game and I cannot remember where I found it! It was online, and was part of a printable kit. If someone knows, please let me know and I will give credit where it is due! Anyhow, it's a fun game. There are words on the apples and you put them in the correct box. Here's the thing... We are STRUGGLING with phonics. Miss L knows all the letter sounds but when you put them together and ask her to sound them out, you can see the look in her eyes that she has no idea what you are talking about. I chose an online program, "Explode The Code" as our phonics/learning to read program at the beginning of the school year. Miss L has trouble with visual and auditory processing skills and this program requires her to work both of those areas. Eventually, she would complete the level that she was working on, not because she learned to sound out the words, but because she'd memorized the words on the screen. I don't know if I mentioned this in an earlier post (but I'm doing it now :o), but I hadn't even heard of sight words (learning high frequency words by memorization) before this school year. Yes, I embarked on homeschooling my child and I hadn't. heard. of. sight. words. It's fine now though, because I have heard of them! AND starting in the third or fourth week of school we started using both sight words (which miss L ROCKS) and phonics (which, well, you know). This week was the week we quit phonics altogether. Miss L was frustrated. I was frustrated. I sent panicked emails to my teacher friends telling them I was thinking of quitting and enrolling her in public school because I felt like a failure and she would never learn to read from me (lucky to have friends who don't mind me being an eensy bit dramatic when it comes to such high stakes stuff!). However, quitting phonics was the best thing we did. Miss L stopped being so frustrated. I stopped being so frustrated and in the end our school district doesn't teach phonics in kindergarten either. One of the awesome things about homeschool is that we can take our time and do what we're ready to do and learn at our own pace. In early October, miss L wasn't ready for phonics and definitely wasn't ready for that program (though people just rave about it, so it's great for some!). We've been so much happier since and we'll revisit phonics in the new year!

 

This week we purchased some cards for ball yoga. We love doing heavy work activities between school subjects (and sometimes as often as between words in handwriting if it's needed) and yoga, because we don't need a lot of extra stuff and we have these handy cards with positions, is our favorite. However, six weeks in we needed something fresh. Enter the yoga deck for kids on the ball. :o) We're loving it and loving something new to do!

 

Here's miss L reading a book lent to us by our favorite reading specialist. It's fantastic!