Paddy's Narration

Paddy did his first "formal" narration today. Of course, we've been "talking about books" since he was old enough to talk, and a couple of times since we started Year 1 I've been asking him what he remembers about a story. (he usually says the last thing that happened in the story).

Today I told him to tell me back the story (A Bundle of STicks from Aesop's Fables) and that I would write it down for him. He talked to me too fast for me to write it down exactly but this is what I got down:

The father gave the sons a bundle of sticks, and they tried to break it, but they couldn't.

Then he gave the sticks to them one by one and they broke them easily.

He said, "My sons, if you agree with each other, the enemy won't be able to injure you --

if you're bad and don't agree with each other, then you won't be any stronger than those sticks."

Cute, huh? I really didn't want to mess up narration for this young one. I want to be able to rely on it as a learning tool, since I am commited to literature as a force for education but want to do everything I can to foster attentiveness in dealing with it. I always have had trouble with narration before. IT didn't seem natural to ME. But trying to narrate the books I read to myself (I've actually been trying to narrate Kieron's Year 4 material) made me both more respectful of the way it helps retention AND the difficulty of it. So from that base I have been able to persevere better in asking for narration. Kieron doesn't really like to do it but he is seeing the point in it and does well.

When I asked about starting narration on the Ambleside list with my six year old, several people suggested that we start off slowly with Aesop's Fables and other simple tales, and then build from there.

Aidan's narrations right now are still about events of daily life. I've been working with him on accurate observation. But when he's more ready to listen to stories I think the narration process will help him, too.

Some Early Learning Things

These are a couple of things suggested in Aidan's OT consult yesterday.

Cornmeal tray -- I made this a long time ago but just found it in the pantry today so I brought it out and put it with their word cards from Spell to Read and Write.

I wrote a word in the cornmeal and then Aidan and Paddy both traced over it. This was easier for them than handling a pen.






Later, in the evening, Aidan read one of the journals that we had written together a couple of weeks earlier. He did really well, actually, is recognizing far more words. Then he wanted to make another journal. I wrote it and we read it back.

Then he asked to write some words himself. Below is what the OT recommended because he tends to lose control of his pen and sprawl his letters all over the page. She thought his pencil grip, control and everything were fairly good and that he was ready to work on writing smaller and within spaces. So she made boxes and this seemed really helpful for him.

The words here are his choices. These are some of his favorite words:

























After we had written them out in the book, he wanted to cut them out.

























Here is a game he made for himself with a lid and marbles. He loves to roll them back and forth and this is actually good bilateral control because he is hemiplegic (his left side doesn't work so well after a stroke in infancy).
























Brendan brought the beautiful wooden USA puzzle out of his room and Aidan tried to do it today. Of course it was too difficult for him but he did all right. Please pay no attention to the crumbs all over the rug. That is life around here!

Weekend Learning -- A Few Little Things

Kieron tells me he read Outlaws of Ravenhurst. We had lost it for a long time, and I suddenly saw it when I was playing music with Clare. He went off to his room with it and apparently read it through so quickly I never saw him. Also, I forgot to mention earlier that his grandma bought him a book of Brain Games and he has been doing them (and noticed and showed me fatal glitches in a couple of the puzzles btw). I need to find him some more books to read beyond rereads of Redwall and Hardy Boys.

Clare and I discussed the lifting of the SSPX excommunications for some time.

Kevin and the older kids watched The Blob. It was the first movie that Steve McQueen acted in.

I read MSB inside a Bee Hive to Paddy. He looked at the back cover where the other books in the series were listed and said "Here's one we don't have.... Magic School Bus inside the Human Body." I don't know where he learned "Human" and "Body". He is sounding out slightly more accurately than he used to, but mostly he is still relying on memorization.

Aidan read "fox" and "play".... two words I didn't realize he knew. He read FOX over here, at Outer Edge of Normal. Looking at Miranda's kindergarten activities for her young daughter, he got so thrilled that I think next week I am going to have to reproduce my own version. His favorite was the muffin pans with the alphabet, because that combines two of his favorite things. He read PLAY, um, at the opening screen of our VCR as it loaded in a Pokemon video.

Over on the left is a list of all the words I know that Aidan can read. Yes, in alphabetical order. I am THAT much of a dork : D. Most of them he can spell, too. Many of them are from his V-Tech phonics board, which I have mentioned before. I am not a big fan of electronic toys; I only started buying them because Aidan was SO weak for so long and for so long while he was in medical care, his inner emotional needs were on a complete different track from his input (which was based on his clinical needs, not his personal or developmental needs).... so he didn't have the slightest idea how to do something to get a response. He needed toys that would give him a big output for a tiny bit of input. Most kids get tired of electronic learning devices in very short order, but Aidan does not and has actually learned quite a bit from them. ... .they are self-correcting and endlessly patient and cheerful.

I remember making a list like this of all Aidan's spoken words -- he was just short of three and had about 20 words total. It impressed the people at his transition IEP from Early Intervention to school services, that I had written it all out.. I guess they like dorky moms.

Soon after that his vocabulary exploded so quickly that there was no need to keep track.

Interesting how there's two times I feel a need to keep track. When not much seems to be happening and I want to reassure myself that something is happening. And when there is SO MUCH happening that I know I will totally lose sight of it all if I don't try to keep some kind of record. Just a random thought....

Week 15 -- the Little Ones

I've lost track of the day we're on since I stopped keeping daily logs.

This is how I worked on Paddy's schooling today... OK, not very colorful, but as a change it worked OK.

First I wrote down a little story he was telling -- that's over on the top right. I used to write out stories the older kids told when they were quite little, and then had them read them back for reading practice. They enjoyed this, and it's working quite well for Paddy and Aidan. Paddy was intrigued and read it out for himself. The last word is the only one he had trouble with and so I guided him to sounding it out.

Then I wrote out a few addition problems for him, underneath -- as you can see, just adding 2, which is review for him. He started to predict the answers --"the next one's going to be ten!!" and then I asked him to complete the question. Two plus What equals ten then? That was a little harder but he sort of got it by looking at the preceding ones.

Then I made the sheet of rimes for "at" and "it" that you can see over there on the top left. His phonics knowledge is rudimentary -- all his reading ability is sheer memorization of familiar words. He had a bit of trouble but sort of got it.

Then the middle sheet in the back -- I thought I would try some multiplication problems -- sets of two. He liked those and figured them out quickly.

Then I asked him to write a big C, which is something he did once last week. This was the only task that made him groan, but he did it. Then he asked to write an S, then he wrote another C, then he asked to try to write small letters. This is because of the OT's suggestion that big repeated motor movements are better to start with before trying to write normal size. I didn't know about this kind of thing when my older ones were little.


As for Aidan, he has been very involved with this (left).... calendar felts for the flannelboard. It looks chaotic but the last few lines actually wrap around like a snake. He still hasn't mastered number order past twenty, but that's obviously the skill that he is trying to master right now, so it was serendipitous that I was digging through supplies and found the calendar felts -- they were too advanced for him a year ago.






The OT was here today and she did:

• Wilbarger brushing and lotion massage, from center to extremities.
• Marching on mini-trampoline, then running in place, then squatting.
• Brain Gym (OT drawing X's and infinity symbols or horizontal 8's on his back while he drew them on an easel)
• Stepping on crumpled newspaper in a large ice cream bucket (to help him raise and lower his foot in place
• Throwing and catching a wiffle ball on a string (it's strung in our entrance and every boy in this house seems attracted to it as if by gravity).

She always works a bit with Paddy too and actually it is kind of nice for both of them.

Food and Toy Sheets

I made these two sheets to deal with two household issues that have been annoying me recently -- toys, and food. With the toys, the problem is the lack of order. Some toys get buried and are never accessed, while others get scattered all over the house. I'm trying to figure out a better "flow" for this.

For the food, I want LESS flow, so to speak.

For both issues, I thought that having a list of goals would help me to work on things. For me, stating the problem is fairly close to solving the problem. The problem is getting the problem accurately stated : ).

There's something else -- I want to try to turn the negatives into positives, as so many things CAN be turned. I don't know if that makes sense.

Let me use an example -- I read a Montessori article where a teacher saw a toddler being reprimanded for "getting into" her daddy's office supplies at work. The teacher noted that what she was getting scolded for was exactly what small children are being encouraged to do in an orderly, constructive way at a Montessori school.

Rather than get irritated because the kids leave their boots in the kitchen (!) it would be better to teach them how to put their boots away, making it into something that is a sort of ritual in itself. Hmm, don't know if that makes sense, but when you read those sheets don't imagine me posting Rules Lists but rather just trying to focus on these areas for improvement.

I didn't make these as downloadables because I figured other people have different issues than we do here.... but let me know if I'm wrong!

Base Ten -- paper beads

I tried to make some golden beads on paper -- here in pdf, left on gif.

It doesn't go up to thousands : ( and I think sometime if I can acquire enough beads I'll try to make some "real" ones). I'm just using regular beads or some other counter for the units.

Here are some base-ten activities and paper manipulatives (using base-10 blocks rather than beads)

Here are some virtual base-10 manipulatives.

Here's an online base 10 game Paddy likes quite a bit. ... it goes up to 100's but you can start with just units, or units and 10's.

Place Value

Number Cards, pdf:

Hundreds and Tens
Thousands and Ones.

The way I understand it, they are designed so you can overlay them to form numbers.... for example, 2345 would be a 2000 on the bottom, then a 300 hundred, then a 40 then a 5. That would give children a concrete sense of place value and how it works.

... Units are in green, tens in blue, hundreds in red and thousands in green again because thousands are the "units" of the thousands period (1 thousand, 10 thousands, 100 thousands). I got this information from Elizabeth Hainstock's Montessori in the Home.

more links.....

I forgot to mention these in the last post:

• Montessori Tray Ideas for Young and Old -- from Garden of Roses and Lilies
• My Montessori Journey -- free downloads
• Theresa's Montessori ideas

Also, I made a "work plan" form in doc. It looks terrible in gif so I'm not picturing it.

Word Cards for Aidan

I made some word cards for Aidan. Paddy worked at them too. They are below in gif. They are short vowel sound CVC's, except for "eel" and "bell" and "egg" which Aidan wanted me to put in near the end since he knows how to read those.

Picture Cards -- pdf
Words for Picture Cards -- pdf.









Aidan helped me type in the words and then hovered around anxiously waiting for me to cut them. He is really enjoying all these projects. Later I am going to back them with posterboard and cover them with clear contact paper so they will be sturdier. I wasn't going to cut the pictures out, but he wanted me to, so I did.

Paddy did them too.

Next, I will try some sentence strips, and possibly sight word match-ups. . This might work well with the simple stories we were writing together during the summer.

Literacy Lessons for my Year 1 children

I have been using this phonics book, Word Mastery (public domain) for phonics work. You can get a slightly different pdf version on Don Potter's site. From reading the teacher's instruction chapter, I don't think the first version of WM was meant to be a stand-alone. She says you can use it with any reader.

By the way, I've gotten very interested in the history of teaching literacy. I waded through many public domain primers and first readers last year, and found that very few teach "straight" phonics. Some of these 19th century books, from the day when "everyone" was literate, are straight "word-calling" type formats. They have to be, because they introduce phonetic irregulars from the first page. It is very difficult to find one that doesn't. I have to heartily admire the one-room school teachers who used these primers, often not particularly well organized or thought through IMHO, to teach such disparate crews as probably showed up at the classroom door.

Also, they taught cursive script from Day One. They wanted children to learn to read and write script from the very beginning. This idea has had a revival in modern days.

Florence Akin, who wrote the manual laid out above, thought as many past literacy experts did in her time that there should be phonics lessons taught rather separately from the regular reading lessons. In the phonics lessons you learned to decode and spell words by phonetic rules. In reading lessons you learned to read, often by using twaddly primers. Occasionally I found a primer or first reader that tried to start right in with simplified versions of literary folk tales or fables or nursery rhymes.

My grandparents are no longer alive, so I can't ask them how they learned to read. But my mother says she learned "word calling" -- the Dick and Jane type format. She said that in her day, eventually you generalized to phonics rules. She said that I learned from a mixture of phonics instruction AND sight reading. My husband learned from whole words format. He jokes that this is why he still can't attack a new word phonetically, OR spell well. It could be that he is right, who knows?

I sometimes wonder if Scout Finch's first grade teacher was a phonics enthusiast? It might explain her sour reaction to the fact that Scout showed up already reading fine just from watching Atticus Finch's finger tracing through the lines of the newspaper as he read aloud to her. The teacher complained that parents shouldn't teach their kids to read because they taught it all "wrong", but Scout said Atticus never taught her -- ever since her earliest memory she was reading.

Off the point -- anyway, I guess I came the long way to thinking that a combination is best, and Paddy at about three requested on his own that I teach him by the Atticus Finch method. He ALWAYS wanted me to trace my finger on the words as I read to him. And now he can read a little, though he prefers to listen.

Here is what I've been doing with Aidan.

I take a few of the phonetically regular words from Word Mastery and he reads a few of the words. Here it is written out already, but often I write it as I sit with him, so he is involved in the process.

Sometimes we do "rhymes" or "rimes". He is actually quite good at this -- that is, I mention a construction -- say, "AT", and then I introduce consonants "C" and he fills in the rhyme. "CAT".


Then I make up some sentences, using a few filler "sight" words so we don't end up with excrecable sentences like "Ann can nab a cat" (I'm sorry, but I just hate "phonics-prose"). Of course, you will say these sentences I am making up are nearly as twaddly and meaningless. However, there is a difference. For one thing, he is involved in the process. I am writing them out from my head, depending on his interests to some extent. For another thing, these sentences are simple but real. They make sense. I want the kids to see that words make sense. The etymology of "sentence" is the same as the etymology of "sense" -- ie, Latin sententia -- thought, meaning, judgment, perception.



Now, in Spell to Read and Write, she doesn't have them read sentences at all until they know enough words to actually read decent simple prose. I admire the principle. The problem with this for my family is that I have one special-needs child and one very young reader. Isolated word drill just does not stick in their immature memories. Nor does "deductive phonics" -- learning the rules first, then applying them. My kids are not analytical yet. I still work on the phonogram cards with them, but in a "time capsule" fashion. I do not expect it to thoroughly pay off until they are older.

And using context clues in sentences to decipher meaning is a legitimate strategy, though not meant to stand alone.

If you go to Montessori Materials, and particularly glance at the pink, green, and blue cards, you will find something that can be helpful for "single word phonics". We used these a lot last year for Aidan. They paid off in the sense that he enjoyed them and learned to do it quite well. However, it did not generalize for him. Probably he was not quite cognitively ready. And I was not using the cards in a general context -- I'm not sure how MOntessorians actually use them.

Starfall was the same -- he can do the rimes and has done them for a couple of years. But it does not generalize outward. Still, I think with a special needs child in particular, the more roads in the better. If he enjoys something connected with phonics and words, we go for it, as long as it doesn't seem to push him backwards.

This "story writing" has evolved into both my boys embarking on "story telling". After I have worked with Aidan a bit on these types of stories shown above, he wants to tell his own story. "We picked Liam up at the train station. Our car broke down...." etc. I write these down but of course, the phonics of these sentences is not yet comprehensible, so then when I read them over to him I only ask him to read the words he has a chance of being able to decipher.

After Aidan's "lesson" I usually sit down with Paddy and the completed page as shown above, and he zips through the story in about a minute. Then he asks questions about the story. Then he wants to write his own story, too. Next time I write about this, I'll take pictures of some of their stories -- I couldn't find them this time. We have papers all over the house.

Here is what Aidan did for writing last week.


My models are on the left. The one in the middle is his first attempt. You can see he doesn't know how to end his tails. This is a recurrent motor problem of his. When he was little he didn't have physical boundaries -- when we were outside, he did not naturally gravitate around me like all my other kids did. Over time, he learned to set himself boundaries, and he does it very well now.

Remembering that, I made a box and told him to try to keep the "a" inside the box. You can see it was helpful to him. He managed to curtail the tail quite effectively. His OT works with him on coloring and mazes, for the same reason.

Very long, but I wanted to write this out. It is interesting to me that I've been more "hands-off", but more "conscious" of these youngest ones' literacy process. The other kids all had different roads to literacy, but I basically used a textbook -- 100 Easy Lessons -- plus whatever else worked with them. Winging it a bit more has made me more conscious of the process, and I am wondering if this is a general truth or just that I was so busy when I was teaching the older set that I blocked much of the process out of my memory! LOL.

Books for the Little Ones

I had a bit of extra time today so I decided to go through and make a slightly categorized list of the books I have in the basket for the little ones. The categories are VERY approximate.

I didn't put the easy readers into the list -- that is, the Little Bears and Frogs and Toads and Dr Seuss's and Corduroy and that kind of thing. Though sometimes the distinctions grew blurry, there are some books that are quite accessible, even though charming and high quality. Some books, Paddy has been listening to since he was 2 or 3 and can now pretty much read on his own, though he still likes me to read them. I didn't put them on this list. Maybe next time I'll make a "ready to read" list that includes these old tried and trues.

Anyway, I'm hoping that making a list, and making it pretty, will make my reading with my little ones a bit more intentional.

While going through his baskets, I also got rid of quite a sizeable percentage that I just have read so many times I can't stand to look at them anymore, or that I decided were too much on the twaddly side to keep any longer. Here's the list in blog form.

Folk and Fairy Tales from different countries

o Hansel and Gretel
o Three Fox Fables
o Rapunzel
o Chanticleer and the Fox
o The Elephants and the Mice
o The King with Six Friends
o The Talking Eggs
o Strega Nona
o Lon Po Po
o Ming Lo Moves the Mountain
o Arrow to the Sun
o Annie and the Wild Animals


o Shan’s Lucky Knife
o The Forbidden Forest
o The Runaway Flying Horse
o A River Dream
o Boris and Amos

Christian Stories

o St Francis and the Proud Crow
o A Gift for Grandpa
o The Twins’ Picnic
o Two Surprises
o Little Jewel Bird

Mice and Madeleine

o The Church Mice Adrift
o Anatole and the Piano
o Madeleine
o Madeleine’s Rescue

Regional Children's Stories

o Little House: Deer in the Wood
o Winter Days in the Little House
o Billy and Blaze
o Blaze and the Lost Quarry
o Cranberry Thanksgiving
o The Sun, the Wind and the Rain
o The Goodnight Circle
o Least of All
o The Rag Coat
o All I See
o Little Leo
o One Morning in Maine
o Burt Down, Deep Water Man
o Blueberries for Sal
o Babar and Zephir

Hundred Acre Wood

o Winnie the Pooh and Some Bees
o Piglet Does a Very Brave Thing
o Eeyore Finds the Wolery
o Tigger is Unbounced
o Tiggers Don’t Climb Trees
o A House is Built for Eeyore

Beatrix Potter

o The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck
o Tailor of Gloucestor
o Tale of Mr Tod
o Tale of Samuel Whiskers

I also have "Germs Make You Sick" but I couldn't find a place to put this very timely book in these categories! SO it goes in the Easy Reader section since Paddy likes to listen to it occasionally.

You probably remember that I had decided to gradually move into Ambleside's Year 1 with my little ones. Aidan is delayed and still at the Are you My Mother? stage in interest level. Paddy is just a very young first grader. ... he won't be six till December. There are so many great picture books. I do not want to hurry through, since this iss the last time through, probably.

I wrote once on my other blog how I journey through the land of picture books.

My goal is to move towards anthologies, by mid-winter, when the snow and glowing hearth encourage us to linger longer over read-alouds. But there will still be a place for picture books -- even my 15 year old and 12 year old were listening to me read to Paddy yesterday while playing a computer game ;-).

Flannelboards for Learning

Aidan loves his flannelboard, and even his older siblings get interested when I bring out a new set. I bought a collection of flannelboard kits from The Felt Source before Christmas, and I bring out new ones at intervals.

Aidan is developmentally delayed and learns MUCH better with a manipulative he can touch and feel and see, and the felt is quite satisfying tactically, more so in some ways than say plastic, or painted wood, or cardboard, though we use those things, too.

I just brought out the solar system set, which has been a hit.

He likes to name the planets -- Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune are his favorites, because they have rings around them. My 6th grader was pleased to see the graphics for the eclipse because he had been asking questions about them recently.





















Over here there are instructions for making your own flannelboard and felt sets.

One thing that's easy to do is to back cardstock flashcards with felt so that they stick to the flannelboard. .... instance, the nomenclature cards at Montessori Materials.

Also, you can find various templates for making felt board sets on the Internet.

I like the realistic-type picture sets from the Felt Source because they are not twaddly. So many educational visuals for children are just plain silly, with cartoon-y pictures. For example, Aidan's speech therapist is often a bit embarrassed by the silly ambiguity of the learning games and tools that are sold as tools for speech therapists. Aidan generally is bored with that kind of thing, too, and I think most children are unless they are TAUGHT to endure them. But that may be one reason why so many kids just turn off on some "educational" things -- they outgrow the twaddle and outgrow the learning along with it. Anyway, I am always on the hunt for realistic visuals for kids.

Aidan and his Flannelboard

Aidan just loves these counting felts that I mentioned in the last post. He has been playing with them all day. For a child with sensory and developmental issues, the tactile (and non-plastic) nature of them, plus the bright colors and concreteness, are very attractive.



There is a simple workbook included in the package (picture below). Very simple, more for a preschooler than a kid Aidan's developmental age. But you could use them as Montessori type command cards. I can think of all sorts of things to do with the "numbers", as Aidan calls them -- color, shape, sequencing (patterns), categorization -- plus adding and subtracting.

Generally speaking, for abstracting the universal from the material. CF this cute video Elmo vs Aristotle made by some students at TAC.



I got them from the Felt Source. It would also be easy to make my own shapes (here is a handbook online and I'm sure there are all kinds of other resources). But the prices were reasonable for buying the ready-made ones, and though the felt is not all-natural, the feeling of it isn't so phoney, to me, as that of plastic or enamel-painted wood.

I told my kids that flannelboards were a staple of my years of going to Sunday School as a child from an evangelical Protestant background! But only the teachers got to handle the flannels, and the stories were usually a bit contrived.

..."Here is Joseph.... his father Jacob.... gave him a .... many-colored coat..... his brothers.... were very angry." (the ellipses are where the teacher scrambled to get the new visual on the board.

Just a bit twaddly, though it must have had an effect since I still have all those Bible stories down cold. Probably more from my mom reading aloud and my later independent readings though, than from that hour a week of crafts and stories and cute little songs.

I have some Bible story felts that I am going to introduce later when the thrill of the counting ones have worn off a bit.. But I'm going to present them rather than do the Sunday School thing. ...let the kids handle them. I imagine that the Bible figures won't be nearly as interesting to Aidan as the numbers and multiple pictures of the counting set. But we will see; now that he has fallen in love with the felt idea maybe I can use the Bible figures to introduce some of the stories he isn't developmentally ready to have read or told to him in abstract.

YEar 0 -- First Draft

This is a very simple checklist for the basic literacy/numeracy subjects for my little ones.



Also, here in the form of a progress chart. But I forget where we are on Math and I haven't doublechecked to see where Aidan is in the upper case letters, so only the first part is filled in.

Fun Things

Aidan figured out a way to work with the Pink Cards, along with some old letter stamps I found in our closet:

My clock manipulatives, inspired by Theresa's ---

Mostly I want Aidan to understand the positions to help him with the WRTR handwriting instructions, and also I thought the manipulative would help him with his everlasting-question-loops whenever he is looking forward to something.


This is an old "Reading Reel" I found around the house -- if you click on the picture you can see a close-up -- anyway, it seems like it could be used for a narration manipulative something like the "narration jars" mentioned here and here and here.

One more thing: someone on my classical list reminded me of this old link I once had to an "Educational Products Taxonomy" . That is a very jargony label meaning different types of writing and other projects classified by the levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Paddy's Reading

I have been reading this book called Primary Reading and Literature -- up on the Baldwin Project site. I printed out a copy of this Primer by the same author. The idea is that children start right in reading "real books" rather than basal-phonics nonsense stories like "Nan ran at a rat." Charlotte Mason and Romalda Spalding (author of Writing Road to Reading) also believed that children should start right in reading meaningful things, but Harriette Treadwell's approach is more like Charlotte Mason's than Spalding's, because Spalding recommended teaching the children to write and spell a whole bunch of words before starting them on "real books" like Ten Apples up on Top.

Anyway, since Paddy is so young (four) and is much more "literature-oriented" than Aidan, I wanted to try to work with him a bit in the Treadwell style and see what happened.

Besides the Primer, here are some cards -- on the big light green one I wrote down all the words used and all the consonants and blends (using phonogram charts like this one and this one at the excellent Don Potter phonics site).

Then on the small yellow cards I wrote down all the words individually, and on the small green cards I wrote down the individual-letter phonograms. The blends are in yellow, underlined, to visually demonstrate they are blends.


The book about Teaching Reading includes two sets of lesson plans for using the primers to teach beginning reading. NOW -- the approach is a blend of "whole language" with teaching systematic phonics following closely. To me, the amateur, this approach seems to make sense. However, most of the proponents of straight phonics I have read recommend NOT confusing the child with whole word reading except in very limited circumstances. So I'm trying it with Paddy because he's very young and if I make a false step, we can take a break for a month or so and then start afresh. On the bright side, WRTR shows how almost ALL the words in the English language have logical phonetic consistency, so "whole language reading", in the homeschool, can easily go right alongside phonics explanations, if you know your phonograms.

To take an example -- Writing Road to Reading introduces "do" as one of the first five words to spell. The "o" sounds like "oo", and this is the third sound for "o" and one that is relatively uncommon. Samuel Blumenfeld, in Alphaphonics, doesn't teach this sound till much farther along. He starts in the ordinary phonics- oriented way with short vowel sounds, then some consonant blends, etc.

Sorry to go on so looong -- I suppose I am assimilating -- narrating -- as I go!

Anyway, Paddy and I had a lesson where I wrote "the little red hen" on the whiteboard and then got him to match the cards with the words on the board. He was mildly interested but not as enthusiastic as AIdan was about his pink cards. But I'm going to keep trying, about three times a week. The nice thing about a Literature approach to reading is that you can easily extend the lessons to words in his Read Alouds. Several of my kids would have absolutely hated me distracting them from the story by talking about letters and sounds, but as I've mentioned before, Paddy spontaneously asks about titles and words and asks -- DEMANDS -- for me to follow the words I'm reading with my finger as I read. So with him, I want to explore a natural approach like Scout Finch's with her father.

Paddy retelling his "Wall Story" -- this was his idea~!

Aidan's Reading

I used the Montessori pink cards with Aidan for the first time yesterday. I print them out on regular paper with our black and white laserjet, and then I put them on pink cardstock with contact paper to seal them. It takes a long time, but is soothing and I can talk on the phone or supervise the littlies' craft activities while I'm doing it.

(I chose the five highest interest ones -- VAN, GAS, CAB -- he loves cars and all things around them!-- )

I presented the cards -- asking him the second part of the Three Period Lesson -- giving him a choice between two word cards -- for ex, saying "Which card says VAN?"

He got the concept almost right away and did a great job matching the words with the pictures.

At the end he was almost up to the task of matching five sets by himself, without my prompting. He would get too excited and mismatch them sometimes, and then I would have him sound out the letters to try to give himself a clue.

NOW -- as I mentioned in an earlier post -- he doesn't really "get" sounded-out words, but this process helps him practice it and also demonstrates to him the usefulness of sounding-out. He grasped that fast too, and would "sound out" by himself even though it didn't completely help.

I noticed that in the process of working with him, I was quite naturally helping his pronunciation, so it was a phonological lesson as well as a sort of motor programming and thinking skills lesson. That is what I LOVE about open-ended methods -- there is more than one learning process going on at the same time.

Trying to match

Success!
Then I asked him to choose one word to write. I was expecting this to be less fun, but he liked it so much he asked to write several words. (I use the Writing Road to Reading "language" to help him think about the mechanics of the handwriting, but unlike WRTR, I hold him next to me and hold my hand over his very gently -- he has some spasticity and tremors and this along with his motor processing makes it very difficult for him to tell his hands and fingers what to do)

Then he wanted to paint. More letters! He can make a capital A, I, O, and X by himself now, which is definite progress from last year.


"Cooking" with playdough and the pots.

Paddy Power -- set to music!

(Paddy Power was the trademark of Ireland's largest bookmaker -- we saw the outlets everywhere and Paddy thought it was so cool that his name was on a sign on practically every street)

It's entered our family lexicon to describe something about our lively four year old -- if you have one of those energetic ones -- I have had two -- that seem to get this feyness or punchiness every now and then -- very cute, but can easily go over the top into acting out or tears! A quality to be cherished -- and refined through the years.

Paddy Power!

Anyway, Paddy's last couple of days have been powerful. I thought I'd write down a list of new things he has done in the past few days. Nothing prodigious, just nice things that show how his mind is working.

He drew several pictures and wanted me to hang them up on the wall, yesterday -- and today stood by them and told a story from them.

He is asking me about ALL the text on the front covers of books, including the author's name -- so now he understands the concept of authorship a bit.

He's listened to a wide variety of books in the past few days -- I got out some new ones and we went through them several times apiece.

And then, if you remember, my oldest son Liam challenged Clare and me to write an arrangement of a tune.

Here is the original tune (he bitmapped it)

Here is my arrangement (I got too frustrated with the bitmapping, so I wrote it out and took a photo of it):

Paddy watched me carefully during my short trial with the bitmapping, and then went to work to produce first this:

then this:

then this!
no help from me at all. So if he has a musical career in front of him, you saw it here first.

Clare helped host a swing dance for the church youth group and for families in general on Saturday evening. I stayed home with the little ones, but Kieron went, and it sounded like it went great. I admire Clare's sheer courage -- she was the little girl who used to run behind me and hide her face in my legs if someone talked to her, and now she is more poised than I am. If that could be called a compliment. But you know what I mean.

Kevin and Sean meanwhile went to a football game -- checking out the opposition for next week's game. When they got home they brought pizza and Clare was full of energy. Paddy danced with her.

I guess the point is that he is becoming such a little human being. My good friend says to me, "You are so lucky.... you are going to have a five year old for a whole year!" That's how I feel about it, too. These little persons are so competent, have so much emotional range, and so much energy and drive to do what those around them are doing. Each one is unique in their interests and personality.

Today he and Aidan had fun stamping -- with a stamp set. I am going to try hard to keep strewing things like that.

Learning to Read --LD

I am stuck on teaching reading to Aidan using 100EZ lessons. He has been able to identify letters by their sounds for a couple of years now but is not getting blending. Part of this, I realize, is because he isn't segmenting sounds or being able to put them together again. So when I sound out "d-o-g" it has nothing in common to him with "dog". It might as well be "man on the moon".

So I'm reading different books trying to figure out ways to get him comfortable with decoding and blending. Here are some resources I found this weekend:

Montessori Mom -- Learning to Read.
--Lots of good information about the pink cards and how to use them. One advantage for this approach with Aidan is that (1) he needs lots of repetition (2) he loves doing things he can do by himself.

Some ideas for Teaching Blending and Decoding
There are some visuals for phonics manipulatives here.

Here is some information on teaching LD students Phonological Skills.
Aidan has been able to recognize rhyme and generate it for a long long time -- probably because of the ongoing music immersion in this house. But there's a step from there to being able to produce it on call. With him, there is a big step between producing something spontaneously, and being able to produce it on call. This is showing up in all different areas of his life.

This site does give a progression for teaching to discern broken-up words, which is something Aidan has gotten stuck on both in 100EZ and in Reading Reflex.

(A thought! Get Aidan's SLP involved in this -- it does seem like an aspect of speech and langauge therapy and most therapists seem to settle in more productively when they have something concrete to work on -- probably because unavoidably, they know the therapy better than the individual child).

Finally, I am thinking that teaching the signing alphabet might help him segment. When he was struggling to learn to talk, he made huge strides once I figured out a "combination" approach. He had DK-type realistic picture books which he loved. I found that pointing to the picture and slooowlly, emphatically saying the word, and then talking about it (because his receptive skills were way above his expressive ones) was effective, and so was signing the word and saying it slowly at the same time. After a while he took off on verbalizing and I dropped the picture and sign talk because they became cumbersome. But thinking about that, maybe writing out the letters, signing them, laying down cards and so on might help him in the same way.

Snapshot of Paddy's Reading

These ones are longtime favorites -- they are so small and pretty. Clare's great-aunt sent her the Beatrix Potters and they have become standbys. I got the cute Winnie the Poohs on a Goodwill foray in Oregon.

These are some of the ones he has been listening to quite a bit since we got back from Ireland.
These are some of the ones he was listening to a lot before we went to Ireland.
These seems like such an easy way to keep track of literature through time that I may start doing the same thing with the older kids. I guess that's why it's called a snapshot of a moment in time.