ABC Hunt, Take 2!

Major parenting fail, here.  A couple of weeks ago I was singing the ABC song with the little girls and it became apparent that Audra isn't super familiar with that song.   #youngestchild #sorryaudra  ;)

This is not to say that she doesn't know her ABC's.  She does.  And she knows the sounds most of them make.  And she can write all of her uppercase letters and is learning her lowercase letters.  But.  The ABC song?  Not so much.

I'd been meaning to put up the alphabet somewhere around our house for the girls, so I did that recently.  And now we're practicing the song.

This reminded me of a game I started doing back when Isaac was in Kindergarten (*sob* about him being five.  I love memories of Isaac-at-five.)  We did a game called "ABC Hunt".

^^^These are Isaac's chubby little five-year-old hands and his wobbly five-year-old handwriting.

So this morning I did this with the girls.  I just traced a plate onto cardstock and cut out the circle, then glued it onto a craft stick and did some cutting and writing.  They thought it was pretty fun.  :)  The only rule was that they couldn't stand in front of the alphabet on the wall and flip their little tabs.  ;)

 

"My Word Book"

"Tommy's new words are written in his 'note-book' in print hand, so that he can take stock of his possessions in the way of words." ~ Charlotte Mason 

Mason goes on to describe that these are words the child knows and is able to "pounce upon anywhere".

That quote from Charlotte Mason, recalled to me through Laurie Bestaver's book The Living Page is what made me want to put together some sort of Word Book for the little girls this year.

It was a scene from a movie, though, that gave me the inspiration for what those books might look like.

{ photo from the movie The Book Thief }

In The Book Thief, (an excellent movie based on the book), Liesel is captivated by books but doesn't yet know how to read.  Her adoptive father immediately recognizes this and creates a word bank of sorts for Liesel in the form of a chalkboard wall that wraps around their basement.  As Liesel learns a new word, she runs downstairs and carefully writes her new word upon the wall.  It was a good visual to me of someone taking "stock of his possessions in the way of words."

Armed with my computer, a classic typeface, our printer and some scrapbook paper, I made "My Word Books" for my pre-reading girls, ages 5 and 6.  (Remembering my book-binding class from college, I also sewed the pages together and taped over the remaining thread, though it's not a necessary step.)

Ta-da!

My plan is that as they learn new words throughout the course of our school year, we'll pull out their little books and they will carefully copy down the words they now recognize.

For now, they've just copied down everyone's name in our family.  :) 

Audra's word book

Perhaps you're not of the mind to sew together pages and don't have years of scrapbook paper on supply as I do.  No problem!  You could easily make one buy buying a blank book (Moleskine, perhaps?) and a set of alphabet stickers and you're set!

First day

from L-R (Audra (K), Ella (7th), Adelia (K), Isaias (4th), and Isaac (5th)

We've wrapped up our first day of school and it was great.  I feel so grateful, every single year, for the freedom and privilege to get to do this homeschooling gig.  I love these kids and I'm so thankful for the time with them and the time we get to spend learning alongside of one another.

My prayer this morning was that our day might go God's way, not mine; that His agenda and plans would reign and that I would invite the interruptions He ordained for our day.  I prayed for myself: for patience and calm, graciousness and a kind tone, and I also purposed not to raise my voice. 

Here's the breakdown of our day, for anyone interested in every detail:

My goals for myself prior to 8 o'clock were these:
-wake by 6:30
-spend time with Jesus
-exercise (treadmill, 20 min)
-start a load of laundry
-breakfast prep (I had a breakfast casserole in the fridge that I'd made the night before that I just had to put in the oven)
-make Mark breakfast, coffee, and pack him a lunch

By 8:00 I'd done everything on the above list except for the load of laundry.  We officially started our day with devotions (during which time I was able to shower and throw in a load of laundry).  I decided that having headphones & CD players in the devotion bin was a brilliant idea because the younger girls chose those and were quiet for a solid twenty-five minutes.  As in, utterly quiet.  The house was really peaceful as I showered, got dressed, made our bed, did a load of laundry and set the table for breakfast.  It was quite nice.

We ate breakfast at 8:30- potato/bacon/egg casserole (link above) and yogurt- and did Bible time (we're reading through Proverbs this year), followed by memory work (we're currently memorizing Psalm 19- we've already been working on it for a few months and we're almost done!).  Then I introduced our new chore system/assignments (photos & details coming soon to a post here on the blog), and we cleared the table.  I showed them their new binders (another post, coming up).  Then we did a drawn narration from our Bible reading and we listened to classical music while we colored (Composer Study... check!)  While they were coloring I loaded the dishwasher from breakfast.

After chores, Isaac practiced piano for 30 minutes while I did Kindergarten with the girls.  Adelia zipped through everything and did the bare minimum while Audra was careful and tedious and wanted all the time in the world, and then more time, and more work to do.  *grin*   I love them both so much.  Ella and Isaias looked at their new assigned reading lists, chose a book, and headed outside to read.

After Kindergarten time, we read some picture books, and then I planned to start our new read-aloud while the kids played quietly on the floor (Audra: duplos, the older three: LEGOs, and Adelia: on the move.)  But there was an argument over a bin of toys and some tears and so we got a late start, but ended up reading one chapter.  Then I read the introduction from Kingsley's The Heroes to kick off our history for the year, while the kids either finished playing or colored.

Then the older three did math at the table for 20 minutes (give or take) while the younger girls played outside (and in, then out, then in, then out), and when they were finished with math it was about 12:30 and since that's all I had planned for our first day, we decided to go on a bike ride.  Actually, Audra and I walked while the older four rode, and then we headed back home for lunch by 2:00 (which Ella and Isaias prepped).  Now we're having quiet times and Ella is going to practice piano soon.

I plan to do Kindergarten on M-W-F, so we wouldn't usually do it on Tuesdays, but since the girls had been anticipating it and our first day landed on a Tuesday, I went ahead and did it for today.  On our schedule I also have cursive (older three) and spelling (Isaias) happening on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in addition to what we did today, but I skipped those for today, knowing it was our first day back into routine.

Mark will be home sometime after 4 and I have a meal planned for tonight (and for the next two weeks.)  I find it so helpful to start the year organized in the meal-planning department.  (I'll post my meal plan on Thursday.)

How was your day?

2010-11 Year in Review: Kindergarten

Isaias (6) was my Kindergartener this year. I really hadn't planned on schooling him because- quite frankly, I didn't think he was ready.

Which is funny because I thought the same thing about Isaac at this age, too.

What happened is that while I didn't say anything to Isaias about schooling last summer, several extended family members did. Things like, "Oh, you get to be in Kindergarten next year, right? What a big boy!" and he got all excited. While I wasn't too keen on the idea of schooling him just yet, I knew that not schooling him would be a low blow to him after all those comments. I just couldn't envision myself bursting his happy bubble. Not because I can't say no to my kids (believe me, I can) but because I knew that for Isaias, a no about this would be devastating to him.

So Mark and I decided to go ahead and begin and call it Kindergarten, but to start really simple. The first week of school I had planned for him to practice forming his ABC's with his finger using a small tray of rice. I had visions of making it through the alphabet in a few weeks but he could seriously not even make a diagonal stroke for the A on the first day. (Told you he wasn't ready.) It was a little mind-boggling, honestly. I mean, I didn't think he was ready, but... um, I really did not realize how UN-ready he was.

So I scaled it waaaay back. We called it school and I made sure to write his name up on the dry- erase board each day with Ella's and Isaac's names and t0-do's, but his list would look like this:

Isaias
-Super Star Speech* with mommy on the couch.
-choose a (picture) book for mommy to read to you
-color at the table

*Isaias had trouble with some of his sounds and for a season, was pretty difficult to understand. I purchased this book two years ago and I worked through the exercises with him last year and at the beginning of this year and it really helped him. His speech is much better and I found this book really helpful for me to be able to narrow down which sounds he was struggling with and to pay attention to that in his speech and catch him on those things and work on practicing the correct sounds with him.)

I did a bit of searching for something for him to do that would feel more like official school to him and discovered this little pre-cursor to what Isaac was doing:
and scooped up this series and that gave him some book work to do at the table when E & I were doing theirs. It's very basic but was really perfect for where he was at.

We also worked on an All About Me book, did several ABC Hunts (uppercase and lowercase letters) for letter recognition, and he traced around metal insets. He played the dice math game, worked on various ABC puzzles/games that we have around the house, and did all of our Bible/memory work and history with us each day.

At some point during the year we went back to my original rice-tray idea and he easily formed the letters. At the end of our year he now is familiar with all the letters and their sounds and often writes and sounds out the words as he writes. He's come a long way and we're really proud of him.

* * *

I think all I have left for these Year in Review posts are the ones on Nature Study, which I began but decided Mark should do instead since he's actually in charge of it. Maybe I'll interview him and post it that way. Oh! AND I remember now: I promised a book list, so I'll do that, too. :)

School after breakfast: Kindergarten

Today I'm covering Kindergarten, which we do only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

You may remember that I wasn't actually planning on schooling Isaac this year. He joins us for our memory work, Bible and history, and I thought that was enough until he began reading. But whenever Ella sat at the table with her schoolwork, he wanted some work to do, too. I had printed out some letter-practice worksheets for the boys, as well as some fun "find the items hidden in this picture"-type worksheets, but it became immediately apparent to me that he needed something more challenging. And like I said: he wanted to do school, and I wasn't about to to deny him that, so I had to do a bit of scrambling to get some ideas together for him.

The first thing we worked on was an All About Me book (thank you, Kimmie for the idea!) Isaac thought this was the greatest thing EVER, and I know it will be a treasure to look back on. Here are the pages we did, for anyone who is interested:

(Front cover)
(1) My name is...
(2) This is a picture of me:
(3) My daddy works at the ___________. This is what he looks like when he's working:
(4) We live at________________ in_________________. This is what my house looks like:
(5) My favorite things to play are:
(6) My birthday is:
(7) My favorite books are:
(8) My favorite movie is:
(9) When I grow up...
(10) My favorite thing to do with mommy is...
(11) These are some things I do well:
(Back cover)

Here are a couple of those pages:



[I just have to interject, here, to tell you that I LOVE this self-portrait of Isaac. He often wears a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap, and he has drawn that, here. And that shirt is his rendition of the Spiderman t-shirt he wears, with a big web on the front of it. I think it's so cute that he drew himself with these typical-Isaac clothes on.]




I also purchased Nancy Hall's Explode the Code, and I am so glad I did. It is perfect for where Isaac is at: he knows all of the letters by sight and many by sound, but he is not yet reading.


The format of this book just makes good sense. It is very straightforward and simple, and repetitive enough that it immediately built confidence in him. Here's an example of one of the pages (click page for larger view):

I have just ordered Rod and Staff's Grade 1 Math for him, too. We can tell he is really good with numbers and we thought it would be a fun addition to plug Math into his Kindergarten work.

Here are some other Kindergartenish things we have done:

*Leap Frog- Letter Factory DVDs
*pattern blocks
*puzzles
*cuisenaire rods for making words

Oh, and many of you stepped up with some great Kindergarten ideas in the comments of this post, so don't forget to peruse that if you're looking for some ideas!



Next up: Math

ABC hunt

Apparently I was SO wrong about my earlier comment of not doing anything with Isaac for Kindergarten.

Last week I discovered that he wants to do school.

Oh.

And here I thought he'd welcome the opportunity to play.

Well, then.

What to do?

I'm a little unprepared for what-to-do for Kindergarten, since it wasn't really on my radar.

I hurriedly printed off some worksheets for letter practice that he can do while Ella does her own writing/math, etc at the table.

And, um... each day so far I've tried to come up with something- for him to do that we can call "Kindergarten".

Then my mom had the brilliant idea to choose a couple of days a week for Isaac's Kindergarten days (so that I don't have to come up with something for him to do every day).

So Tuesdays and Thursdays, on the white board, it says "Isaac: Kindergarten".

This morning it said "ABC hunt" beneath that.

Which intrigued all three older children. All morning long they were asking what an "ABC hunt" was, and when did Isaac get to do it, and could they do it, too?


Here's what it was: while I worked on school with Ella, I asked Isaac to write down all the letters of the alphabet. He did this, in his careful, oh-so-cute capital letters. (Don't you just love the way your little ones form their letters? They're so wobbly and cute.)

And then his task was to go through the house and hunt for all the ABC's. When he found each letter, he was to circle it on his paper. He *loved* this, and was so creative in scurrying about the house, finding letters (boxes/cans in the kitchen, CDs and books, notes and magnets on the fridge, etc). The only rule was that he could only find one letter per place (ie: No standing in front of the world map and circling every letter of the alphabet, or finding ten of the letters from one book. You get the idea.)

When Ella finished her work, she wanted to do her own ABC hunt, so I tailored it a bit for her: I asked her to write down all of her letters, uppercase and lowercase, and then find an item in the house that began with each letter of the alphabet. Then she was to write the word on her paper next to the letter. Heck, she could have even drawn a picture, too- but we didn't get that far.

Okay, so now you get to tell me what you're doing (or have done) for the Kindergarten (pre-reading) age, because clearly we're not doing this every day, as fun as it was! :) Comment away on your favorite Kindergarten resources, would you please? I could use a little help!