Learning to Read

Sophie likes to look at books almost as much as her big sister. She often asks me or Delaney to read to her. Sometimes I am in the middle of something and tell her "later". Delaney is usually stuck in her own book and declines. It's not surprising that Sophie's motivation to read by herself has been increasing lately.

I began teaching her sight words at the beginning of the year. She loves games like Memory and Slap the Word (slapping the word I call out with a fly swatter), and Speed Read (I flip our sight word cards as fast as I can and she reads them as fast as she can until she reads them all). Sight words are so important; they give children a solid foundation of words that they just know, and build confidence in their reading skills. About 50% of the words used in children's books come from the first 100 Dolch sight words. Knowing these words by sight gives more time to decode (sound out) the rest of the words, and eventually improve reading comprehension once decoding becomes more fluent.

A few more sight word games here .

Sophie and I have been playing lot of word games and making up a lot of silly words while she gets ready to learn how to read. Phonemic awareness (awareness that words are made of a series of distinct sounds) is crucial to learning how to read. Skills like rhyming, alliteration, awareness of syllables, phonemic blending/segmentation/manipulation all share a part of the reading process.

We often play our reading games in the car. She and I make up silly rhymes, or say tongue twisters. We play "guess the word", which consists of me segmenting a word, and she has to put it back together and tell me what it is... /c/ -/a/-/t/..."that's 'cat'!" She and I clap out syllables, or use various foods to show how many syllables are in a word during snacks.

She is beginning to play the segmenting game all by herself, and write down the letters she hears.

Keeping herself busy while I make dinner.

She is totally obsessed with knowing what every single street sign says, and "reads" most of the signs on our way to familiar destinations. (More information on environmental print here. Lots of good information on early literacy, too!)

This intersection keeps us busy...

wikimedia

I still have my old, reliable bumblebee game from Scholastic, that is still in good shape after a little over 10 years. I got it out on a whim one day, not sure if Sophie was quite ready for it, but sure enough, she surprised me and played it like a pro.

I adapted it a bit...she rolls the dice, and spins for her letter, then writes out the word it makes. I try to avoid really weird words (although nonsense words are important when learning to decode, too!), so I rig the spinner a little bit. Instead of using the "buzzy bee" cards, landing on a bee just gives her an extra turn.

 

 

We aren't on a "reading activity schedule". She inevitably asks to do one of the many activities daily, and I make sure to stop whatever I am doing when possible and have some fun with her.

 All of this, but I think especially the word segmentation activities, are making decoding words come together for her. She is beginning to read our beloved Starfall books and is so proud of herself.

Oh, Library. How Can We Resist You?

The kids love Mondays, because that is our Library Day. Delaney has learned where to find her favorite books, and lately I have been so happy to see her branching out and looking for other books that she might like. She still tends to gravitate toward fairies and magical creatures, but she has brought home some other interesting books of her own choosing, too.

We skipped our Library Day yesterday, because we both have several books left to read from last week. We are book-aholics, though, and by today, we had to go feed our addiction. I only meant to stop in and pick up the three books they were holding for me. We didn't even mean to go to the kids' section. But 45 minutes later, our book bag felt really heavy!

She looks so tiny in the library.

Delaney often stops to chat with the librarians, or other library patrons. Once she has amassed a good stack of reading for the week, she finds her favorite rocking chair and reads until we have to leave. This might be her favorite part. Some days we are in a hurry, and have to pick out books and go. Some days a school is having a field trip and her reading area is noisy and busy. Her favorite days are the ones in which she gets to enjoy a nice, quiet reading moment all by her self.

Sophie walks around with me for the most part. She picks out her own books from the little kids' section, and helps me find non-fiction for her and Delaney. She knows where Delaney's fairy book section is, and likes to look at those books too.

When we are finished picking out our books, she enjoys pulling a rocking chair up beside Delaney and we read together for awhile.

Delaney is very interested in Abraham Lincoln and Shakespeare right now, so she has several biographies of Abe, and a copy of Beautiful Stories of Shakespeare for Children, by E. Nesbit. I love this book. According to the book, E. Nesbit's children loved the stories of Shakespeare, but found the plays extremely difficult to read. She felt the same, and put them into story form so she and her children could read them together. It's lovely.


Our library has a wide selection, and a great inter-library loan online request available. I really appreciate that...I find so many books that I want to read, and the online system lets me find and request them without feeling like I am bothering the librarian every other day.

Just a small "to read" stack, right?

Once we have all collected enough reading material and have taken some time to bask in the library's quiet, we check out all of our books.  Delaney has her own card and PIN for the self check-out, so she takes care of her own books. Sophie knows how to scan all of our books, so once I enter my info, she takes care of the rest. Cullen went to the library with us a few weeks ago, and was impressed with their independence in this area.

 

The only drawback of Library Day is that once we get home, nothing else gets done...The laundry stays in baskets, the toys stay on the floor and math is completely forgotten. A small sacrifice, I say. :)

I love the library...I love its quiet calm, the endless shelves of books, the smell of all the paper...I am glad my girls do too.

...And the New Year Begins

We've settled back into a nice rhythm for school since taking some time off around the holidays. I think we were all ready to get back to a regular routine. It was definitely good to have a few weeks to read as much as I wanted and for the girls to play as much as they wanted. I feel like all three of us have renewed creativity and excitement to learn again.

Sophie wants to do her "math facts" every day...which currently means learning to write her numbers.

We count random stuff all the time, and she counts to about 20 independently now. I am reading a book called "Dr. Wright's Kitchen Table Math", which has ways to integrate math into every day activities for ages 2-8. It's a little dry when "Divergent" is calling to me from the next room, but back to school, right? :)

Delaney is on her fifteenth math facts set, working hard to learn all her addition facts. I try to mix it up a little. Sometimes she writes the answers, some days she tells me the answers, some days she uses the Mathtopia app to practice instead.

Delaney is still enjoying Dreambox. She is getting much better at the problem solving section, and her favorite game is Frog Race. She is about 1/3 through the second grade section, and she amazes me every day with the concepts she picks up with relative ease.


We've been playing lots of board games...Scrambled States of America, Princess Monopoloy, Connect Four, etc. Delaney used Connect Four to teach Sophie about patterns this week. Big sisters are the best.

 

Delaney continues to learn how to be a chess master with Cullen in the evenings.

I love listening to Sophie's commentary during the games. Last night while "helping" them play, she said, "Wow. Looks like I winning!" and "Aaaargh, don't put me in check!"

Sophie has been practicing initial sound recognition. Her stack of sight words that she knows is getting bigger, and we've started playing with sounding out small words.

Our new year has begun quite nicely, and I am so pleased with my girls and their excitement to learn!

Gone Fishin'

When I first began teaching at public school, a fellow teacher told me that if you turn practicing ANY skill into a fishing game, kids will play it over and over again without complaint.

It's totally true.

I took some dowel rods, some yarn, some magnets and some tape (I should use glue, and will adjust this soon, but I was in a hurry :) ) and in less than 3 minutes was the proud owner of two fishing rods.

I attached large paper clips to Sophie's sight word cards and some addition flash cards I found in a box, set them out on a blue bin lid (because water is blue, right?) and taught the kids how to "fish".

They loved it. In fact, they loved it so much, we have been playing it every day. I love it too, because they can practice whatever they are individually working on, but do it together, and add an element of competition if they so desire.

 

I typically put Sophie's cards face up, and let her pick a word and read it to me. We have also played variations in which I tell her which word to find, or set the cards upside down so it is a surprise. Each version has been fun for her.

Delaney's cards have math facts on both sides, so she "catches" any card and tells me the answers.

 The girls take turns, and if any answers are incorrect, the "fish" gets thrown back in the water, a.k.a. placed nicely back on the lid.

This game has endless possibilities...For Sophie, I will probably make it into a counting game next week. Delaney's math facts will be tailored more closely to what she is currently learning, and subtraction will appear. We could practice alphabetical order, vocabulary, colors, patterns, shapes, rhymes...the list is really endless. It's inexpensive to make, too - you can fashion a fishing rod out of many things that are lying around the house...pencils, paint stirring sticks, wooden spoons, etc.

I might have to make it a little more exciting at some point, and plan to make some cards with sharks and other dangerous ocean creatures, and perhaps some nice ones too, and toss them into the mix. It's always fun to catch a surprise.

Doubts...and Reassurance

We have been doing many of the same activities over the last few weeks. Delaney spends most of her time writing stories, drawing pictures, writing letters to family members and reading books. We listen to cello music and the girls paint how it "makes them feel", in Delaney's words.

Writing letters and drawing pictures for the Easter Bunny

Read-a-thon

Cello art by Delaney

Cello art by Sophie

Sophie continues to love the alphabet magnets and we work on putting them in order and spelling her name. I downloaded the app, Endless Alphabet, after reading some comments that Brandi made about it, and we absolutely love it. Sophie has to match up letters to spell big words like "gargantuan" and "invisible" and then a cute little monster acts it out while the narrator tells her what it means. I am dying to see if she will incorporate all of these words into her vocabulary as she starts speaking more.

I limit my girls' screen time so their eyes don't fall out and their bodies don't become too stationary, but there are so many fantastic apps for the iPod and android tablet that I don't feel guilty anymore when I let them play for awhile. The land of Motherhood can be such a judge-y place, and I think moms are often made to feel like if they are not talking/interacting/playing/reading with their children every moment, that they are doing something wrong, or being selfish, or any number of other things. I have been having a bit of a rough week in this respect, beating myself up for my "lack of". I need to just *stop* and realize that I am doing just fine. My kids are happy. They are learning. They are playing with each other more every day, making up cute little pretend games. They are both curious. We all love books. There is nothing wrong with playing computer games for an extra 30 minutes or sitting around reading books all day long, doing "nothing". It's okay if we stay in our pajamas until noon, and then enjoy a midday bubble bath. That's the beauty of homeschooling.

Some days I begin to question my belief in child-led learning, and second guess if I am teaching Delaney enough math, and if I need a curriculum, and if I am going to fail her academically some day, and a million other doubting-myself-questions.

Then, she asks me with questions about the aurora borealis, which she learned of while she was watching her very favorite show from the BBC, "Walking With Dinosaurs" (it's on Netflix if you have a dinosaur lover).  We looked up pictures and definitions and learned so much. Did you know that the different colors in the aurora depend on electrons striking oxygen or nitrogen at certain altitudes? I certainly didn't!

And then there was the evening that I pointed out the constellation Orion in the sky (she still has a love affair going on with the sky) and she immediately ran inside, found her constellation book and drew Orion, Sirius and one other unlabeled constellation that I am supposed to look at and identify. (Who knew I would be the one taking the tests? :) )

I've probably said it before, but my very favorite thing about homeschooling and letting her tell me what she wants to learn is how much I get to learn too. She was interested in past U.S. presidents a month or so ago, and we checked out some library books and learned some very interesting facts about our nation's leaders that I would probably never have known had she not been intrigued. She is also curious about gemstones and jewels and how they are formed. Back to the library we went, and we (both) studied those books, learning where and how they are made. (We are saving the rest of that study for when Grandma Gail comes to visit. She is a jewel expert.)


All of these things remind me that I am on the right path, and as long as I nurture the girls' curiosity, and encourage each learning endeavor, we will all do just fine.

Alphabet Time, Sophie-style

It seems like it was just yesterday that Delaney and I were working on ABC's and ABC order. Sophie loves her alphabet, too, which I really credit to www.Starfall.com. I am certain that Starfall taught Hailey how to read ten years ago. I bought the kindergarten curriculum a few years ago when I started homeschooling Delaney, and Delaney still plays more.Starfall.com almost every day. The online books and poetry and music are wonderful, and the math games are fantastic. It is one of my happiest $36 expenditures every year and I HIGHLY recommend it. They have an iPhone/iPad app that is $2.99 and mirrors the ABC games on the website. I downloaded it for Sophie in January, and within about 2 weeks, she knew all of her letters and most of her sounds. It has ABC mazes to reinforce alphabetic order, "what is different" games for identifying letters and differentiating uppercase and lowercase, an uppercase/lower case sort, and lots of other skill builders for initial sounds and rhymes.

Since Sophie learned her letters so quickly, I decided to test her attention span and see if she was ready for my alphabet games.

I unpacked the Garanimals ABC and just set the board out on the floor. I showed her the alphabet cards and let her identify some of the letters for me. I asked her to find a few on the board, demonstrating how to match them up, and then I left her alone.

A few minutes later, I checked on her, and she was doing great.

 

 

She matched up fourteen before she moved on to another activity. If you ask her, her favorite letter is "Q".

Today, I pulled out the "rainbow" cookie sheet and the magnet letters. We put them in order together...we sang the ABC song (26 times ;) ), and she found the correct letters and put them in their spot.

She wanted to play with the little animal erasers that I use with bingo, so I asked her to find letters and she put animals on top of them.

I love her little voice. "Where aaaaaaare you, letter E? Right there!"

 I helped her spell "Sophie".

She thought she was pretty awesome after finishing all of this hard work. I did, too. :)

Back to School

January brought a new year, a new city, and a different school adventure. Hailey returned to KAOL in Kingman, which brings me many mixed feelings, but also gives me much more time to spend with the little girls.

We have already gotten into some great routines. We usually do some writing and coloring first thing in the mornings. Delaney writes in her journal; she has started to write little stories and design her own fashions.

Sophie wanted to do the same. I asked her what she drew, and she replied, "Raining. It's happy rain!"

Soph draws lots of little circles, and colors in coloring books. She is also beginning to "pretend write", drawing little squiggles and saying that they are words. The other day, I had made her a little mad, so she went to write about it, saying "Mean mama! Mean mama!" the whole time. She must be beginning her memoirs. :)

Delaney and I made up our own "Pictionary". She is an excellent little artist and we had a lot of fun. I especially loved her doctor and nest in a tree. Sophie wanted to play too, and drew a flower and more raindrops.

Tracing a carrot to make a snake!

 

The girls have been watercolor painting often, too.

We have also been enjoying some math, science, and reading Charlotte's Web together, attending Storytime at the public library and Bookman's, and many other adventures, but those are posts all of their own!

Reading Aloud

I began reading chapter books to Delaney in December. It's so important to read to your kids...it builds their desire to learn how to read, improves imagination, teaches vocabulary, improves grammar...I could go on for a long time. We read short books all the time, but I decided to see if Delaney had the patience to listen to a whole chapter with few pictures. We started with "Because of Winn-Dixie", which she loved. When I read aloud to her, I read a chapter, and then we talk about it. She asks about anything that she is interested in, or has questions about, and I ask her comprehension questions to make sure she is understanding the story. She amazes me with her ability to understand and empathize with the characters.

I chose to read the first Laura Ingalls Wilder book, "Little House in the Big Woods", to her this month. I absolutely loved the Little House series when I was young and read everything I could find that Laura Ingalls Wilder had written. I still love the stories as an adult, and was excited to share them with Delaney. We are almost to the end of the book after 2 weeks of reading, and we are both hooked. Hailey listened with Delaney during chapters 1 & 2, and decided to read the book herself for her monthly novel for Language Arts. She is currently about 1/4 of the way through the second book, "Little House on the Prairie". I am so glad that she is reading them with us...they are WONDERFUL.

Delaney is so interested in the characters and the facets of their life in the Big Woods, like hunting, making butter, butchering, sewing...all of the things that we take for granted in our modern lives. She talks about it all the time, and we play "Mary and Laura" a lot. Since it has been so nice outside, we pretended that the playhouse was our House in the Big Woods. I was Laura, she was Mary and Sophie was Baby Carrie. :) Then Delaney was Ma for a little while, too.

She drew a picture of Pa with chalk.

I found some fun printables at www.LapbookLessons.com for Little House in the Big Woods. Delaney colored the logs brown with a little blue, and we talked about how the heat from the fire can turn wood different colors, then she marble painted the logs. She hadn't done that before, and thought it was pretty fun. We are going to try to make butter with heavy cream. I wish I knew of someone that has a butter churn. I think she would really like to see what a real one looks like!

She is reading really well independently now, and it is definitely her favorite activity. She made herself a little reading pit the other day and it kept her comfy and busy for a long time.

I'm so glad she is growing into a little book worm!

Journaling

Delaney started working on a daily journal in November. I read the book Never Too Early to Write by Bea Johnson almost every year to refresh my memory on writing/reading philosophy. Johnson guides teachers through all of the stages of writing, and how to teach kids to be amazing, creative writers, and improve their reading skills as well. I used this book in my kindergarten class, and had amazing results.

I made Delaney a journal with a large piece of construction paper folded in half, with blank paper inside. I let her decorate the front. When she journals, she uses one piece of paper and can draw whatever she wants for at least 5 minutes, then dictates her story to me. Some days she writes for the minimum amount of time, and other days she will draw for 30 minutes.

She has had some very creative days.

 And some days that you can tell that she is just waiting to be done...haha.

She is beginning to use some phonetic spelling to write her own stories, listening to the sounds that she hears in the words and putting them together.

We usually do this while Sophie is asleep, but sometimes she gets to journal too. :)

I make sure that I am doing some kind of writing while she writes. Sometimes it is sneaking in some email, or writing lesson ideas, or perhaps sneaking over to Pinterest, but I try to show her that I write/type too, and that it is fun! We often read a book of her choice beforehand. I find that this gives her imagination a little jumpstart, and sometimes she will journal about what we read, or make up her own related story.

I love journaling with her, and I can't wait to look back at our journals in about 6 months and see the progress that she has made!