I know, I know, it's practically summer.
Also, I should totally get a picture of Miss Boo and her reading book for you. (This one, if you're curious.) But we are just recovering from our colds, and taking an extra long nap (hence the ability of Mama to post), so no picture yet.
In the meantime, I thought you might want to hear about our adventures in homeschooling.
Miss Boo has been learning to read. We've always played with letters--you know, the typical fridge-magnet "that's the letter A" stuff, so she knows her letters.
(Buddy does too, I discovered today. I haven't explicitly taught him yet, since I was sort of waiting for him to communicate in English on some kind of regular basis. On a whim, to distract him while he was falling asleep for a nap this afternoon, I asked him to find a letter T on the book I was holding. He found three. Then two Rs, three Es, and the colors yellow, blue, and pink. Hm. This lends credence to my theory that the kid doesn't talk because he thinks English is a dumb way to communicate.)
Anyway, Miss Boo and I have been working on phonics. This was greatly aided by the arrival, in a PACKAGE, of all exciting things, of her new primer in the mail. The primer helpfully has the alphabet on page 1 and a list of short, easy words (A is for AX, that sort of thing) after that, before Lesson I. We work our way down the alphabet and Miss Boo can say most of the sounds of the letters. I can feel that we're almost to the breakthrough where she will realize that /d/-/o/-/g/ can blend to "dog", and then there will be no stopping her.
In the mathematics section, we're counting. We memorized 1-10 as a sequence, and the difficulty now is convincing Miss Boo that if we're counting, say, six pennies, that we should not make the last penny stand for 4 in order to end up at 10. Buddy seems to get numbers (and shapes, and puzzles) intuitively and can even point out the right answer in the addition problems on Team Umizoomi.
Miss Boo wrote her name yesterday, in giant straggling letters, before deciding that the feet of the R needed to be touching (which made it into an 8) and that the whole thing would look prettier colored in, anyway. It's a good thing I don't have to start keeping evidence of her work for a couple years.
Lest you think I'm pushing the child, let me tell you that while she was sick she actually whined for phonics. I had to say, "no, let's drink our milk and have a rest and I will read you this story, and THEN after the rest we can do more letter sounds." (She's gobbling up the Kirsten books--me reading them aloud, of course; I've got the Felicity books too, but am thinking we'll have to get some more if this keeps up.)
Anybody got ideas for an equivalent book/series I can read to Buddy when he discovers that all the American Girl books are about...uh, girls? I thought about an old series of cowboy books I read as a kid that included titles about Kit Carson and Portugee Phillips, but I don't know if I can lay hands on them.
Consider that your homeschooling update of the week. I sense in my bones we'll be doing a lot more reading aloud presently.
Cheers,
Breanna
Also, I should totally get a picture of Miss Boo and her reading book for you. (This one, if you're curious.) But we are just recovering from our colds, and taking an extra long nap (hence the ability of Mama to post), so no picture yet.
In the meantime, I thought you might want to hear about our adventures in homeschooling.
Miss Boo has been learning to read. We've always played with letters--you know, the typical fridge-magnet "that's the letter A" stuff, so she knows her letters.
(Buddy does too, I discovered today. I haven't explicitly taught him yet, since I was sort of waiting for him to communicate in English on some kind of regular basis. On a whim, to distract him while he was falling asleep for a nap this afternoon, I asked him to find a letter T on the book I was holding. He found three. Then two Rs, three Es, and the colors yellow, blue, and pink. Hm. This lends credence to my theory that the kid doesn't talk because he thinks English is a dumb way to communicate.)
Anyway, Miss Boo and I have been working on phonics. This was greatly aided by the arrival, in a PACKAGE, of all exciting things, of her new primer in the mail. The primer helpfully has the alphabet on page 1 and a list of short, easy words (A is for AX, that sort of thing) after that, before Lesson I. We work our way down the alphabet and Miss Boo can say most of the sounds of the letters. I can feel that we're almost to the breakthrough where she will realize that /d/-/o/-/g/ can blend to "dog", and then there will be no stopping her.
In the mathematics section, we're counting. We memorized 1-10 as a sequence, and the difficulty now is convincing Miss Boo that if we're counting, say, six pennies, that we should not make the last penny stand for 4 in order to end up at 10. Buddy seems to get numbers (and shapes, and puzzles) intuitively and can even point out the right answer in the addition problems on Team Umizoomi.
Miss Boo wrote her name yesterday, in giant straggling letters, before deciding that the feet of the R needed to be touching (which made it into an 8) and that the whole thing would look prettier colored in, anyway. It's a good thing I don't have to start keeping evidence of her work for a couple years.
Lest you think I'm pushing the child, let me tell you that while she was sick she actually whined for phonics. I had to say, "no, let's drink our milk and have a rest and I will read you this story, and THEN after the rest we can do more letter sounds." (She's gobbling up the Kirsten books--me reading them aloud, of course; I've got the Felicity books too, but am thinking we'll have to get some more if this keeps up.)
Anybody got ideas for an equivalent book/series I can read to Buddy when he discovers that all the American Girl books are about...uh, girls? I thought about an old series of cowboy books I read as a kid that included titles about Kit Carson and Portugee Phillips, but I don't know if I can lay hands on them.
Consider that your homeschooling update of the week. I sense in my bones we'll be doing a lot more reading aloud presently.
Cheers,
Breanna
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