Teaching Reading: Conclusion

Since I've spent so much time telling about Phoebe's reading progress, I thought I'd report on my older two also.

Elizabeth is heading into 5th grade.  We don't do reading instruction anymore, but I do have her read out loud to me from different school books or the Bible each day.  There are a number of hard words that she mispronounces because so much of her reading is done silently to herself.  So I'm able to help her with correct pronunciation.  (And many times I have to look up a word to figure it out myself!)  She's able to practice clear, distinct reading also when reading aloud.

Jonathan finished Delightful Reading last year; so this first grade year has been about lots of reading practice.  He read "The Primer" by Harriette Treadwell (free to read online).  He is working his way through the extra sentences in the "Delightful Reader" ( we didn't do all the extra sentences last year).  And he is reading "Frog and Toad Together."  I alternate readers at the end of each chapter.  He also reads his copywork each day; he's working through "Hymns in Prose" right now.  And my plan is to use the "Hymns in Prose" reader with him next year.  It has great uplifting content with challenging words.

Jonathan is really catching on to the various phonics rules as he reads.  He simply picks up on them as I explain the way a certain sound works.  His personality doesn't like any exceptions or rules that don't make sense to him.  (Why does kn say n?  Why couldn't they just put an n?!)  I know he'll enjoy etymology when he gets older ~ I was thrilled to have an etymology course in high school because it explained so much about the history of words.

All the kids are progressing in reading.  Not all at the same rate.  And it sometimes feels slow to me.  But they learn a little each day and it all builds up to make a nice visible foundation when we look back on the year.

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 4

I thought it might be helpful to break it down a little more if you are interested in using these simple plans.  You'll work on the sentence exercises for several weeks, so the sounds and words are not all to be learned in one day.  These are not broken down into daily lessons, but rather into sentence "chunks".  I'll give the sounds and words focused on for each of the 6 sentences from the previous post:

For the first sentence: Pam is tan.

1. Learn and/or review sounds p, a, m, i, s, t, and n. 

2. Learn and/or review words am, Sam, Pam, spam, is, an, man, pan, span, and tan.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the second sentence: Tim spit in a pit.

1. Learn and/or review sounds s, i, t, p, m, n, and long a.
2. Learn and/or review words it, spit, pit, sit, Tim, in, sin, tin, pin, spin, and a.
3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.
4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the third sentence: Sam is a man.

1. Learn and/or review sounds s, a, m, i, long a, and n.

2. Learn and/ or review words sap, map, nap, tap, apt, and imp. (These words aren't used in any of the sentences, and since the child has learned all words related to Sam, is, a, man, this is a good place to learn these words.)

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the fourth sentence: Sit on the mat.

1. Learn and/or review sounds s, i, t, n, a, m, and introduce short o.

2. Learn and/or review words on, at, pat, sat, mat, spat.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the fifth sentence: An ant sat in a pan.

1. Learn and/or review sounds a, n, t, s, i, and p.

2. Learn and/or review the word ant and at and an words if needed.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

For the sixth sentence: Tim sips tea.

1. Learn and/or review sounds t, i, m, s, p and introduce ea as having a long e sound.

2. Learn and/or review words sip, tip, tea, sips.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

                               Our Third

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 3

Now that we have some simple word-building under our belt, I plan to add several steps: writing words in her word notebook, sound/word activities, and, once she is very familiar with some words, sentence-making.

I've selected 20 words from the list in the previous post and written them on cards. After Phoebe makes a word with letters, I show her the card and she copies the word into her word notebook. The Delightful Reading kit includes a word notebook, but any blank notebook will do.

Activities can include reading a word card while jumping up or down stairs with each word. I have her go back a step if she gets the word wrong; we go through the small pile of words over again until she gets to the bottom of the stairs. You can read a word aloud and let your child find the word among a couple of other word cards. You can hide the familiar letters around the room and let your child find them to put them together to make words. Are there other activities your child enjoys during pre-reading lessons? I'd love to hear more ideas to keep my active girl on task. The movement really does help her concentrate.

Once she is very familiar with a few chosen words, I'll have her pick up the words I tell her and lay them in a row so that she may then read a sentence.

The sentences I chose are:

~ Pam is tan.

~ Tim spit in a pit.

~ Sam is a man.

~ Sit on a mat.

~ An ant sat in a pan.

~ Tim sips tea.

(A couple new words are added to help make cogent sentences.)

So a day's lesson might look like:

1. Review sounds from chalk board.

2. Review words from previous lesson using word notebook or word cards.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

This will be great practice for continued word-building with Delightful Reading next year. And then we'll be heading into "real" reading lessons!

Next post will show lessons broken down even more.

See Part 1,  Part 2,  Part 4, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 2

I worked out ahead and made simple plans to help Phoebe word-build as we finish up the school year. I chose two vowels (using only their short sound), five consonants and one blend: a i n p t m s sp.

We go over these sounds at the beginning of every lesson. She says the sound or gives a word that starts with the sound.

For variety we alternate using our wooden alphabet letters and the ones provided in Delightful Reading. I keep them in their own little bag so I don't have to search for them every time we sit down for a lesson.

We take these 7 letters and put them together to make words ~ as many combinations as we can make. Phoebe needs lots of help with this part so far. It's helpful if she blends an ending first (like -at) and then adds a letter to the beginning ( s -at). Combinations include:

(it sit spit pit in sin tin pin spin Tim is tip sip sap map nap tap an man pan span tan am Sam Pam spam at pat sat mat spat ant apt imp)

Phoebe is able to to handle making 2-4 words a lesson. We work on the same words several lessons in a row until they are very familiar to her.

The next post will continue sharing word-building plans.


See Part 1, Part 3,  Part 4, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 1

Phoebe is in the pre-reading stage of learning to read right now. (Simply Charlotte Mason has excellent articles on the different stages of reading that you can find here.) I've been using some ideas from Ruth Beechick's "A Home Start in Reading" along with CM suggestions from Delightful Reading to add activities as we learn sounds and word build. She just turned 6 and we consider this school year to be preschool. She's not overly interested in a lot of seat work (read "She will hardly sit still!"), so we keep lessons short.

We've spent this school year learning letter sounds with books and songs and wooden alphabet letters, puzzles, large wall cards...... anything I could find in our home that has the alphabet. She was very interested in her name and learned those 5 letters easily. We also drew the letters in the air and in a pan of sand (grits for us, actually) ala CM.

We then moved on to concentrating on a few consonants and vowels. Our list is a little longer than it should have been: M, P, Z, A, B, S, K, D L, I, J, N, T. ~Phoebe named things that began with the letter. ~I would point to 3 or 4 sounds and have her repeat them after me. ~Sometimes I would make a mistake on purpose to see she'd catch me. ~We used a children's dictionary for some sounds. She would look all through the pictures and say the words out loud. ~There are a few more ideas also in "Home Start in Reading". We didn't do more than one sound at a time.

It makes sense that you don't need to learn all the sounds or letter names at the beginning of this reading journey. You can teach a few and let your child begin to blend words, so she can feel the excitement of reading words on her own effort. Next time I'll share what we're working on for word-building during our last 12 weeks of school.

See Part 2,  Part 3,  Part 4, and Conclusion

Spanish and Latin Resources

The ideal way of learning a foreign language would be to have a native speaker live with us (or maybe just come to our home several hours a week) or to live in the culture of the language we are learning. After all, our kids seem to be learning English pretty well living in America.

But I haven't found those two ideals working out so far. What we have tried follows:

Usborne First 100 Words in Spanish (click title for Amazon)~ This book was given to us. I don't know if I would have bought it on my own, but it has been nice for the younger kids. They like to look at the pictures, and they hear what some common Spanish words sound like (helpful pronunciation guide in the back).

Play and Learn Spanish ~ another ideal here would be for mom to learn the conversations & songs and apply them to every day life. That just never materialized. So the 1st-4th grade kids listen to one section once a week. I read the English part first. Then any readers in the group read the Spanish part while listening to the CD. They listen through the section twice. The songs are fun and catchy ~ "Sol Solecito" is a favorite. The kids go through this book several years in a row. (click book cover for Amazon)

Pimsleur Spanish was not a hit with the one child who has used it. One of her biggest hangups was the overuse of the word 'beer' (I wasn't as familiar with this edition as I should have been!). It was expensive for how much Elizabeth loathed it. I might try it again when she's older. (click image for Amazon)

A local co-op Spanish class thankfully brought Elizabeth back around to enjoying Spanish (God knows what we need and provides!). I will hopefully be able to utilize classes periodically.

Salsa was a recent discovery that all the kids enjoy (preschooler, 1st and 4th graders). They are Muppet-like shows that are entirely in Spanish. I read the English synopsis first, and then they just watch an episode once a week. ~ http://www.gpb.org/salsa/term/episode

The 4th grader and I are also reading short children's books in Spanish and figuring out translation as we go. I'd love to figure out a way for the kids to use what they are learning. That may be a change we figure out for next year.

And this was a year of starting Latin. For ease of use and accessibility, quick feedback from the instructor and web management, enjoyment, and actual learning, (price isn't bad either), I highly recommend Visual Latin. We are going through it pretty slowly, but Elizabeth likes to randomly translate words into Latin so I know it's working and she's enjoying it. She's also reading a Latin children's book and just received a Latin New Testament. Even though she doesn't understand everything she's reading, the VL instructor (Dwane!) recommended this approach. And I just realized he posted my question and his answer on his blog! How cool is that: Visual Latin.

* As an affiliate of Visual Latin, I receive a percentage of all sales made via click-through links provided on this website.

Welcome!

I'm excited to begin this new blog to share Charlotte Mason with you by way of our family's educational experiences and resources.

The CM road for homeschooling continually inspires me to keep teaching. I look forward to the next year, the new books we will read. I look behind with satisfaction at the depth of accomplishment (while still learning how to change and do better! We make several kinds of changes every year ~ poor oldest child really bears the brunt of forging our school path). I watch my children at present, still learning the habit of sweet, even temper (as opposed to complaining ~ they are normal children after all) and, sometimes despite themselves, connecting with books and artists and the physical world ~ connecting with their Creator.

I feel a kinship with Miss Mason and those who use her methods. It's a great journey to be on.

Charlotte Mason voices ideas that are applicable even beyond homeschooling, and I'm glad to share part of the journey with you.

If you're fuzzy on the details of who Charlotte Mason is, these links give helpful synopses:

Simply Charlotte Mason

Ambleside Online

Childlight USA

Ambleside Schools International