Ryan's Reading Lessons

I  have taught all three of my older boys to read so far, well Ryan is still leaning but he is doing fantastic. People always ask me "how?" or "what program" etc I honestly have never used "a program" Teaching Ethan was an accident. He was in public school up through 1st grade but he learned to read full in kindergarten from what we did at home. I just read with them. Did letter and sound games. I read simple reader books, and I did do site word flash cards with two of them. But I do not do that any more. I guess my method is a combination of exposer and phonics. I do not introduce a phonics "rule" though a program and then teach words in that fallow that rule. I just read books and discuss the rule as it comes up. Starting with sounds letters make and then working my way through letter blends etc. Some might think this is confusing or how a child could keep up, but I have been blown away how well they learn and my guess is because they are learning though reading works in contacts of stories and book instead of just "memorizing rules" and then trying to use those rules to read. I hated reading as a child, and hated the rules, they did not make sense to me, and there were always words that did not fallow them, so I do not stress my kids learning them, but I dooo teach them, just though reading as they come up. 

 I did buy this program Delightful Reading through Simply Charlotte mason, and I enjoy it. I used it with Aaron some but he took off and did not finish it. I am using it more with Ryan, but I adapt it to make it work for us, but I really like it so far. We build a work, sound out the work and write it in his book. Here he is learning about Magic "E" words. (see I do teach the rules) and we build worlds with this rule, and then we will read books later and try to find words that fallow this rule. I guess you could say I do "use this program" but I do not fallow it to exact but I do use it. I also have the books a Parents guide to teaching reading, but I do not do that until after my kids are already reading fully on there own. I do go back and teach them the rules so they can be better able to figure out new words on there own. But I do it later when they are fully reading (age 6-7ish) so they are not feeling frustrated, but almost like tools to decoding - I hope that make sense.

 I have a bunch of work books and games, file folder games, work wheels etc. I think I have posted links some where here. I also use the Now I'm reading books. They like those, along with lots of other fun reading books that I read with them. I take turns reading they read a word or two then I read, then as they learn more, they read more. I will also have them repeat me sometimes too, a good skill.

 I am kinds of all over the place and go with the flow depending on the child. But it seems to work. I think the KEY is making it fun, going at their own pace and eliminating stress and pressure. I know after my fist two kids read so fast, for a while Ryan was really resistant, and I though - man this kid will never learn to read. But I just changed things up, prayed for him, and stepped back and did not pressure him and how he loves reading lessons. He also took a big jump into it when he turned 6 and really has a desire to want to read like his brothers. That really helped him wanting to do it because he sees he benefits not just because I am saying he needs to learn. Love the self motivation!

 Word wheel activity, and also a dot paint activity, I wrote some words (just letters for Dallin) and said them, and they put a dot on them when they found them. Just review words out of sentence context is a good skill too.

Love my sweet fast growing boys!

Cultivating the Habit of Attention

Attention is not something this blog get, but that is ok, because I try to focus more on what this blog is about more then the blog itself! ha ha

One of thing things I do to help with me this roller coaster homeschooling life of mine is I get the wonderful opportunity to go to a Charlotte Mason moms night meeting. They have been an answer to prayers to be over the years. I still applaud them then for not kicking me out when I came each month full of tears feeling like a failure. Oh- how I have grown!

they are now even greater and have allowed me to continue to grow by helping out with leading the group meetings sometimes. This time I team lead it with my amazing friend Amy :)

I know there were many of you - by the way I missed you! who did not make it so I thought I would send out my notes from the meeting. Also LOTS of links to the thinks we talked about.

Sooo here it goes...

Amy started off by sharing a lot on the Habit of Attention from the wonderful book Laying Down the Rails they also have a wonderful section on "Dawdling" that Amy encourages us to read as well. There is also some great insight in the Chapter called Inconsistent Kitty from Charlotte Mason Companion book, after we were all full of wonderful and inspiring quotes and sharing ideas,

I shared a few things.... These are my notes so they are not "fully what I said" but I did add here and there to make it a bit more complete.

More on the how we could develop these habits not only our Children but ourselves as well

The goal is to Teach Self Compelled Attention –

She (as in CM) wants us to teach the “child to will themselves to attention” rather than just obeying forced attention.

One is lifelong, the other will be temporary, ending as soon as the teacher is gone. 

There is no education but self-education.

Self-Compelled.––As the child gets older, he is taught to bring his own will to bear; to make himself attend in spite of the most inviting suggestions from without. He should be taught to feel a certain triumph in compelling himself to fix his thoughts. Let him know what the real difficulty is, how it is the nature of his mind to be incessantly thinking, but how the thoughts, if left to themselves, will always run off from one thing to another, and that the struggle and the victory required of him is to fix his thoughts upon the task in hand. (Vol.1, p.145)

How can we do this?    

-       Clearly understand what is excepted of them – in a safe non “provoking way” this means that we need to make sure the child knows not only how to do the work, but what is expected as far as rules. For example my boys know that if they are focused they get a 5-10 minute break before heading on to the next lesson, etc. They know that is they waist the time, they do not get a break and will have to finish later, when they would other wise be getting free time, or free play. 

-       I am, I can, I ought, I will – making sure they "understand" also means for them to understand who they really are, going back to CM motto for children. 

    - They have to have a desire and know they can- develop this habit of attention as well because the Lord want them too, (not us making them/teaching them)

-        -  Like a muscle, the more he exercises his will to pay attention, the stronger it gets and the more he will be able to pay attention.

-       - Keep lessons short

-      -  Genuinely praise whatever effort you see them making towards developing their habit of attention.

-       - Go about this little by little, day by day rather than expecting perfection the first day. It takes time and practice just like anything else.

-       Grace, patience and encouragement are a great help.  

Why so hard?

CM said Attention 'is in every child in full measure'. Then why do we see so little of it in so many children? Mason claims that we hinder it. Some things she says hinder attention are:

- the 'talky-talky teacher' who gets between the learning and the child - over lecturing 

- lifeless books with no living thought in them & long lessons

- force and over correction

- not accepting what the child gives back (their work is never good enough)

- not trusting the child's intellect

- over stimulation of from other “screen activities” or the idea we need to "always prepare activities and   things" for schooling 

What can we do?

Reduce Stress – relaxation book, I LOVE this book! Teaches about good stress and bad stress, it is soooo much easier to learn to pay attention when you are not stressed! 

Adjusting assignments, to the needs of the child. 

Giving more attention to relationships with that child, rather then assignments 

Diet& Food- we are Gods greatest work in all that He has created

–      what we eat effects us, end of story. 

      Essential Oils – really help me. I like these two depending of if I need to "relax and focus" of if I need energy to focus Tranquility, or Awake  

     Games and Activities 

     to help train the brain to be able to develop the Habit of Attention 

Trey of Items - Activity - we did this at the meeting I thought it was fun. (see picture bellow) 

you place a number if different things on a trey, and let the kids look at, then take it away and see what they remember. If they are old enough have them write it down. 

You can also take away a few things and they bring it back and see if they can tell what is missing. 

you can do all things that are similar like cars, or very random items 

you can leave a trey of times to be looked at through out the day, and see if they were paying attention, or place it out, and let a timer and them take it away, or cover it. Try it different ways. 

-        

Be a Spy

-       hide something small – lego guys or small pictures through out the house and see if they can find them through out the day- you can tell them to be on the look out, or better yet just see if they notices themselves through out the day 

-       also service spies – be on the look out for seeking ways to help others

Picture Study fun books – picture study is a great way to help develop this skill, a couple of our favorites are... 

Spot the Differences Art Masterpiece books- we only have book 2 they are short but really fun. 

We have A LOT of art books but we enjoy this one a lot  

This is not an "art book" but it is really fun, Look and find book, my kids LOVE it! 

Games: 

Othello-  this game teaches all kinds of wonderful things for the brain! 

Copy work – pick some quotes or scriptures on attention

Read Books Bible Stories – Noah; what if he had not paid attention to Gods instructions? or Samuel? or others- relate that to us, and how we need to be prepared to pay attention to do the Lords work. 

Jars Activity-

Jar of golden Habits - got a large Mason Jar, and also a container of yellow popping corn, and we had a lesson, where we read this Story called "One Scoop at a time" this story teaches us that as we obey the commandment over time each one is like a little kernel of light, but over time it added up to lots of light. My kids LOVED this, and after a couple months we filled the jar and then had pop corn as a fun activity. You could do this same thing, with the idea of Attention, it is a Golden Habit that shares light helping to develop other Habits. 

Be the Example for them-

“At Scale How time was to be respected, given to the thing or person claiming it rightfully.  Then there would always be time, without over-pressure or distraction.  This sense of time value was hard to achieve but it bore the test of experience during the two years' training.  What an effort of faith it all was...it did not seem possible to find a moment for everything, yet if no time was wasted there was plenty of it and no hurry. - Cholmondley,  p. 150

Mason states "Do not bury yourself in the book while the children are reading aloud.  Give your full attention to the reading, then when the time for narration comes receive what they tell you with your whole mind.  They will tell it all the better to someone who is listening and who is not consulting a book."  To this, Cholmondley adds, "To carry out these two pieces of advice needed great power of attentive reading beforehand and of attentive listening during the lesson."

-       Am I doing to much multitasking?

-       Am I really listening to them? 

    What kind of example am I setting for them? 

    I am the first to say I am still really learning!!!! 

   Ok- that evening some other things that came up were habit training charts, 

    Habit Charts and links

      I do not know how to share a file on here so if you want to a copy of the Obedience Chart I use let me know (see Habit Training - on Obedience - yes I know I still need to add part 2 to to that!)   
 Here is a really bad pictures I just took with my iPad- you get the idea though- see the other post for details on it.

     Amy shared THIS one that she likes  

     I made my own VERY simple version of the one above for what my kids need if you are interested let me know I will be happy to email you a copy. Again bad ipad picture of my version :) I will post more on how we use this in a later post but in short if they are "caught" doing good things by anyone else they get a check, and if it fills up they can pick a little prize from the treasure box but we talk about how these habits are worth more then treasure. 

o  Other things shared 

Amy -  shared this Blog she likes URtheMom - she said you can find lots of blog radio (I looked and could not find it though- so I will ask her- Amy if you read this can you tell us how to find the radio station you were telling us about?

     Also people asked about Handwriting apps Amy's top pick was Wet dry App- I guess they have a free try it one- then you upgrade to the full- 

My kids like this one, I think it is to flashy, & over stimulating but it works GREAT for my one child because you have to hold your fingers like you do a real pencil. Not just with your finger, I have tried it, and it knows, - this would be better for a little older kids because of that. It is called Crabby Writer 

THANK you all!!! if you read through this- sorry for my bad spelling, typos etc. hope you found something that will uplift and inspire you on your journey! 

K and Pre K activities!

My favorite kind of activities for younger kids are things I can do and make with them, and engage and really enjoy them with, BUT then they will keep enjoying it for a while, while I get things done with the older two boys. And these two activities fit that mold. 

 Kool-Aid Play-dough- there are a million recipes on Pinterest I used what ever one I had the stuff for. My kids love this, it is soft and smells really yummy and had bright colors. If you kids would eat it then I guess it would not be so good- but my kids really enjoyed it.

 Then they will play and play with it for a while :) we also use it for school activities too, you can stamp numbers, letters, spelling words, math problems into play dough we use it a lot, then it gets dried up, and we go with out for a while until we make another batch. (12/2013)

I do not remember where I got this idea, I think Pinterest too. We had been learning about chemical reactions in our Real Science for kids program, so this was lots of fun. Just take a pan of baking soda. Then I got a bunch of containers fill them with vinegar and food coloring. I put a dropper in each color and let them at it. The loved the explosions that happened. Dallin would get all excited and say look! a Chemical reaction! Ha ha When they ran out of vinegar I gave them more until it was full of to much vinegar and would not react any more. 

 They loved it! Kept them intertwined for a while with the droppers it lasted a while. Great motor skill working with the droppers. I also told them if they poured it in, the activity would be over quick and they could not to it any more so they did not want that and were good about not pouring the colors in.

 They also had fun blending the colors in the explosions. (3/2014)

Art lessons

For Art this year we have been working on ARTisitc Pursuits. We do not do it all the time and if I have another book to go along with it I will add that. For example in that program they often will show work from a famous artist and if I had more info on that Artist we will add that. 

they are working with Oil pastels here fall of 2013

Here we read the book Sky Color, and also another book that showed good examples of the art of blending colors and using bright colors when painting. We are not in a rush to do this program, we do it once a week or so. I have enjoyed it, and we will continue with is next year as it fits in. 

 here they are using water color crayons - spring of 2014