Language Arts In Our Homeschool

Have you all seen the Virtual Curriculum Fair Posts over the last couple of years?

A great bunch of homeschool bloggers all get together and create, via their blogs, a virtual curriculum fair.

Looking for new curriculum resources?

Then be sure to check out all of the fair links to see what others are using in their home schools.

So let's take a look at what we do around here for the Language Arts component of our home school.

Phonics ~ Learning To Read

Fitzroy Reading Program -  This is what I would call the spine of our learning to read program. All
three of my children have either used this or are currently working their way through the program.

The Fitzroy program is made up of a large set of leveled readers, which they have now converted to be used as an App. This makes them a fabulous portable tool and a much more affordable option.

Each set of 10 readers also has a go along workbook, this covers the phonics that is being learned in the readers, along with spelling, grammar, composition and vocabulary. Although I personally don't feel that this is enough for a complete program, it does give you good starting off points to cover these in more detail.

Explode The Code ~ We supplement with E.T.C. These are very simple, methodical workbooks that focus on phonics. What I love about them is that once the child has mastered the first few lessons they know exactly what to expect from future lessons. Whilst they will be learning new sounds or combinations of sounds the layout of each lesson is exactly the same.

Easy Read System ~ My daughter has struggled with her reading. Late last year we were introduced to the Easy Read Program, which she has been using and is coming to the end of her lessons. We've seen a vast improvement using this program, in combination with her regular language arts lessons.

Logic Of English ~ We've also been introduced to L.O.E this year so have been working on a way to get that it into the mix. So far I am very impressed with what I've seen. It is an extremely thorough program that works on teaching the phonograms and how that all relates to reading and spelling. It also contains a grammar portion for those that wish to use it.

Handwriting ~ Penmanship

Penmanship is covered to some extent within both the Fitzroy and the Explode The Code programs. We also use copywork as an added penmanship tool.

Writing

Cover Story Writing ~ my eldest is just over half way through the Cover Story Writing program. He's not a writer and this is not something he enjoys doing so I am thankful that Cover Story introduces various writing types and concepts in different ways.

Narrations ~ narrating is what helped my eldest to really take off in his writing so it is something that we try to do when we can. We use oral narrations, with myself as scribe for younger non writers.

Here To Help Learning ~ the younger two, along with our small family group micro school are working their way through this writing program currently. I have a full review to post shortly on this program but in a nutshell we are loving it!

Grammar

The grammar that is provided in The Fitzroy Program is more than enough for the younger kids and I don't really worry too much about it until they are reading and writing well. Then they can actually see a use for what they are learning.

My eldest uses the Grammar component in Cover Story Writing (which they only have two lessons left) and has just started with the grammar in Logic of English. When we have time we also very slowly work our way through the book we have from IEW's Fix It grammar series.

Reading

We read aloud daily, myself to the kids and then they also read aloud books to us as a group. They also have their own personal selection of books, most of which they choose themselves, to read.

They are part of a small, casual Roald Dahl Book Club, where slowly the group is making their way through his books. We gather to discuss the book, work on a few fun activities and if possible watch the movie.

This year for my eldest we've started a teen book club, this term we are reading John Marsden, Tomorrow When The War Began. We meet each week with a group of teens to discuss the book and undertake various activities together. I have been very pleasantly surprised to see how much they are all enjoying the book club.

It seems like such a lot when I list it all out here, so please don't feel that we use all of this every single day, because we don't. We mix it up so that everything does get utilised over the course of the week though.

Not relying solely on one program works for us. We aren't getting bored using the same thing day in and day out and from past experience no one program covers it all anyway.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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This year the Virtual Curriculum Fair is hosted by Laura @ Day by Day in Our World, Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses and Kristen @ Sunrise to Sunset. Language Arts: Words Make the World Go Round by  Laura @ Day by Day in Our World The Language Arts in Our Homeschool and Everything Relating to it   by Joelle @ Homeschooling for His Glory Teaching Elementary Latin by Yvie @ Gypsy Road How to Learn ASL & Spanish in 20 Minutes a Day by Rochelle @ RochelleBarlow Classical Word Study by Lisa @ GoldenGrasses Language Arts Means and Methods by Laura @ Four Little Penguins Sprechen Sie....  by Jennifer King @ A Peace of Mind The Art of Eloquence  by Jennifer King @ A Peace of Mind Love Languages by Jennifer King @ A Peace of Mind 3 Reasons You Don't Have To Be Afraid To Grade That Essay - And It's Free @ LJSkool High School Language Arts by Kym @ Homeschool Coffee Break Words, Words, and More Words by Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses Finishing Strong - Starting Gently by Kristen @ Sunrise to Sunset

Reading Response Activities - Play With Me

This term with our co-op group we decided to break our kids up into two smaller groups, which has been much more effective to be able to give them more targeted age appropriate activities.

So whilst the older group are off working on Creative Writing, the younger group have been working on Reading Response Activities, using picture books.

As I normally run the Creative Writing Group I haven't had the opportunity until this past week to have some picture book fun with the younger kids. I love Picture books, they are such valuable learning tools, even for kids that may feel they are beyond them.

Given that this was the seventh week for them doing these activities, the book I chose was much to young but as I already had everything prepped we went along for the ride anyway.

This particular activity is given a one hour time slot, so whilst you could absolutely extend the learning, what I am sharing today is everything we did in that hour.

Play With Me is the gentle story of a little girl trying desperately to interact with the animals she encounters at the pond. Only realising that after she is quiet will the animals actually come out to play.

Whilst I read aloud, everyone water coloured a pond, some of them chose to add in drawings of the animals from the story. We housed all of the related items to this book in a file folder, so they glued their ponds to the front of that.

Each week they have been working on quickly and easily being able to summarise the story of the day. On week one they were introduced to this simple Summarising Sheet. They were able to easily identify each part of the story based on what they have learned using this sheet every week.

You can find a copy of the Summarising Sheet over at Nicole's TPT store in her Reading Notebooks. She has a reading notebook for several grades in her store. I'm unsure if the sheet above is in each of them though, you may have to ask Nicole that question.

After our summarising discussion we moved on to a Story Puzzle, the children are free to draw or write on these, whatever they choose. Basically another simple round table chat about the elements of the story. It is really nice to see them interacting and having the opportunity to bounce off each other, often this is one area in home education that can possibly be lacking.

This particular reading response sheet is from this big Reading Response Sheets pack on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Each week, each adult (we take turns with running the various groups) chooses their picture book and the activities to go along with it, apart from the summarising which is done each and every week.

This reading response pack covers all of the basic elements of dissecting a story.

Finally, we played a quick game of Who Am I? Because I knew this would be very simple for them I placed the focus on giving one person at a time the opportunity to speak.

These kids have been working closely together for some time now and so with familiarity the more confident children generally are holding the floor and doing most of the talking and answering of questions.

So we played a little game of, 'who has the ball'. Whoever I threw the ball to was the only person allowed to speak, therefore they had their chance to answer in any way they chose. They really liked this little game!

You can download a full pdf of prinable activities to go along with Play With Me  over at Homeschool Share.

The past seven weeks has been a nice gentle way to ensure each of the children understood many of the reading response concepts and a good refresh for others that had already been exposed to these terms.

Next term they are branching into a Literature study based on an abridged classic (not sure which one yet) and I know that this term has been a good introduction to that.

Happy Homeschool,
Kylie

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Free Printable: Christmas Stamp & Colour Pages

I have a couple of children that are heavily into a colouring in period at present so I decided to whip together a few Christmas related colouring pages and sneek in a little learning at the same time.

All you need for these are colours and alphabet stampers. The children colour the page and stamp the word in the spaces provided below the image.

Download these Christmas Stamp and Colour Pages here.

Also check out my other Christmas Printables, which you can find on my Printables Page. 

Have you looked at this years Christmas Fun Link Up? Be sure to add all your Christmas posts over the coming weeks.

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Reading Concerns

I'd be lying if I said that I'd never experienced concerns over B's reading, because I did and I think for many home schooling parents this is the one area that they stress over. What if I can't teach my child to read? Where does that leave us in our home schooling journey?

Thankfully for most home schooling families this concern quickly resovles itself and even if it does take a little time in the end it is, in the majority of cases, resolved and the child grows into reading.

So then, once they are reading you need to deal with the battle of what they 'will' read and what you'd prefer them to read. Does anyone else struggle with this? 

We've all seen the articles and blog posts galore on 'twaddle' and what it potentialy does to children's minds. However if we are making our children read the classics for instance even if they have absolutely no interest in the story then is that really any different?

Granted we may feel better about ourselves and yes we can rattle off to our home school friends that little 'Freddy' just got through his 9th classic for the year, whilst all of the other home school mums look on in awe, but was has that done for 'Freddy' and his desire to read?

Would you as an adult continually read books that held little interest for you simply because, say, your husband said you had to read them? I think not! So I wonder why we do this to our children? What makes it ok?

Admittedly I would much prefer to see my children reading quality literature most of the time but when a child has struggled with reading, is it not more important that they are at least reading?

I found this article interesting and this blog post written in response to the article, both offer food for thought.

For me, for now, I am happy to see him carry around a book and have his nose in it, regardless of the 'twaddle' it may very well contain.

Lets Learn Letters: Letter T

Try Some Silly Letter T Chants

Roll some play dough letter T's on this printable playdough mat.

Download the Playdough Mat here.

Decorate T's With Toothpicks and Tissue Paper.

Have fun with funny Letter T Rhymes and create a whole Alphabet Rhyme Book..

Download the Terrific Tigers Rhyme Page here.

And don't forget to show off your handiwork!

Books 4 Big Kids: Mrs Pepperpots Outing

This is a sweet little book that had all of us laughing and smiling and begging for more.

I'd actually never seen or heard of  Mrs Pepperpot before. This book was a hand me down from Grandma and one we really enjoyed very much.

Mrs Pepperpot is a funny old lady that shrinks, without warning, even to her, down to the size of a pepperpot. Whilst shrunk she has the ability to converse with animals.

During her outing she meets animals that are treated poorly by their owners and she does her best to take them under her wing.

This story is short enough to read in just a couple of sittings.

K drew the main characters from the story with pastels.

B had a case of perfectionism with this one. With every animal he attempted to draw he couldn't get it right. They all looked 'right' to me, but not to him and so in the end he just asked for a colouring page. Do you think I could find a colouring page anywhere online, no way.

The illustrations inside the book are mainly line sketches so I decided to just take a copy of one of the pages. Being quite an old book the pages are yellowed but apart from that it worked perfectly.

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Lets Learn Letters: Letter K

Try some silly Letter K chants.

We barely even needed to touch K this week. Being the first letter of her name it was pretty much a given that she knew K and it's sound.

Write letter K's in a salt tray. Try sand, rice or whatever you have on hand.

No idea what's going on here. Blogger turned this image and I can't see how to fix it. You get the idea!

Roll some play dough letter K's on this printable playdough mat.

Download Play Dough Math here.

Decorate K's With Kidney Beans.

Have fun with funny Letter K Rhymes.

This was fun and a little challenging. I used the kites on the play dough as a template to trace and cut out the individual triangular shapes that make up the kite. I had K manipulate the shapes into their correct positions to form the kites. Lots of flipping and turning going on here.

We then glued them onto a sheet of paper and cut that out to complete the kite. I suggested that she use string for the 'rope' and glue it under the koala's hands, but she chose to simply draw straight onto the page and decorated with glitter ribbons to finish off.

Download Keen Koala's Flying Kites here.

I am trying out Box.net for my file sharing, with these new files. If you have any issues downloading them please let me know.

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Lets Learn Letters: Letter M

Try Some Silly Letter M Sound Chants.

As we cover a letter we stick this laminated sound chant cards to K's desk as a reminder for the letters. We go over each sound chant daily. She loves doing these completely on her own and is the first thing we have ever tried like this that she does, enjoys and WANTS to do on her own!!!


Download for this is coming soon, I promise.

Write letter M's in a salt tray. Try sand, rice or whatever you have on hand.

We love the salt tray, it is perfect for practising and any mistakes are quickly erased.

Roll some play dough letter M's on this printable playdough mat.

Download available for the Playdough Mat.

Decorate M's With Macaroni and Money.

Both of these were a little tricky to stay glued on. Macorni keeps falling off and we had to use sticky tape for the money. They both look really great though.

Have fun with funny Letter M Rhymes.

K painted her background night sky and the moon, mixed shades of grey. (I squirted out some black and white and only just mixed them to give that dappled look. More black for the sky and more white for the moon). K glued on the monkeys, the rhyme and the star stickers.

Her rhyme alphabet book is coming together nicely with these additions.

Download for the Merry Monkeys on the Moon available.

Please note I am no longer uploading files to Scribd as they are trying to charge people for their archives currently and I dislike 4Shared, so until I can find an alternative, if you would like a file, please just email me. There's a link in my sidebar. Just give me a few days to respond. Thanks for your understanding. :-)

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Lets Learn Letters: Letter B

Try some silly letter B sound chants.

I do plan on making these for each letter, they're fun and simple to say. I'm unable to share them yet though as they are all nowhere near finished.

Write letter B's in a salt tray. Try sand, rice or whatever else you have on hand.

Have fun with funny Letter B rhymes.

I printed the funny rhyme and the large banana's clip art and K used our tie dyed paper towel to make little balancing butterflies.

Download the banana's rhyme page here.

Roll some playdough letter B's on this printable playdough mat.

Download the playdough mat here.

Decorate some B's with buttons and bows.

Most of all have fun with the Letter B.

Please let me know if you use and show any of these activities on your blog. 

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