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.

Home Speech Therapy

Speech Therapy ideas for home
Online Ideas
This looks like a good overview by an SLP

There is more here: HomeBased Speech Therapy Plan.

More about designing your own home therapy program.

Mommy Speech Therapy -- a blog.

Aidan's school SLP is going to be out of town for over a month so I am continuing his therapy at home. She gave me a whole bunch of handouts, mostly on thinking skills type things for kindergarteners.... like facial features, shapes, prepositions.

I was thinking of doing it as themes, but can't find anything online specifically targeted to themes.... but maybe I can work the concepts into other things we are doing.

Here's a Kindergarten Curriculum Plan though, at Kinder Themes.
Themes arranged by Month.
Some by Alphabetical Order
Some ideas here --DLTK

Grammar at Linguisystems
has list of objectives suitable for where he is, so that might be helpful.

Paddy and His Books

I used to keep a daily record of Paddy's reading. In a perfect world I would like to keep it up, but in the real world, I can only keep SOME records at a given time. So it dropped.. but I'm thinking maybe I could start it up again more sporadically, as inclusive samples, rather than a comprehensive list of everything I read to him.

I'd like to have Aidan on the list, too, but he is hard to read to. For one thing, reading to him always pulls Paddy in, and then Aidan runs away!

But anyway, here is Paddy's booklist -- I'm putting it on the sidebar along with the other forms I am using.

Day 20!! and progress

Sean, age 14, didn't do Latin today. He is on exercise 23 of Henle.
He did Jacob's Algebra chapter 2 lesson 4 which brings him up to direct variations -- a bit slow today because of pain due to activity level yesterday.
He did Greek and Vocabulary. I told him there would be a quiz on Monday for vocabulary/spelling.
I gave him Lord of the World by Msr Benson, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, and Lamb's Shakespeare to start reading.

Earlier this week he read some of the Earth Science text and Creator and Creation. It is still a light schedule but covered most of the bases.
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Kieron, age 11, did Latin -- up to exercise 13, the second declension. Did well.
Hasn't done math yet since yesterday. I also want him to do some more of his Italics handwriting.
He has finished reading: Amazing Poisonous Animals, Lost Wreck of the Isis, and More Once Upon a Time Saints. Does he retain it by reading so fast? This is an open question, but I do think kids get some below-the-surface retention and understanding when they are reading a book that's digestible enough to be interesting to them -- and he was interested, because I did not assign him that much reading.

I gave him Howard Pyle's King Arthur.
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This afternoon we have Homeschool Stations of the Cross -- Aidan has a cold and apparently doesn't want to go -- at least, so he keeps telling me. I haven't done much academic work with the littlies today but they did have a full, rich day yesterday and Paddy is playing productively today.

Sean is going to the JV and varsity football with his Dad this evening.

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We're a "month" through! In light of that, next week I'm going to try to incorporate just a bit of review and variety in Latin, especially, and perhaps in Math and Greek. The humanities are already pretty varied and not too challenging. I do want to start a sheet of things to review and reinforce for their reading -- either by finding a similar book to read, or by a notebook page, or by index cards..... that's on my list of things to think about this weekend.

I would like to introduce copywork and composition next week, and continue presenting materials for the younger ones to work on, and also introduce some religion and liturgical year stuff for the preschoolers. There is this homemade book for prayers and this religious scrapbook for little children.

Also, Aidan loves flags so much I'm going to look for some nice flag flashcards for him.

CTB's account of the Pirate Day.

Aidan just said, "I'm sneezing to Beetlevan!" (I think he meant "to beat the band!" LOL)

Progress Notes -- Paddy, Aidan

Sometimes a child takes a cognitive leap, seemingly overnight, though it probably only seems that way. (Remember the Frog and Toad story about Toad planting a garden and how frustrated he got waiting for his seeds to sprout?)

In the past couple of days Paddy seems to have had a bunch of mental seeds sprout.

At Mass, he was trying to read the Responsorial Psalm -- it helped that it is one line which we sing slowly over and over -- he got to where he was following the words and whispering them on his own. He tried to follow the hymns too, but with less success because they move faster and the verse schematic is difficult to follow.

He drew several books -- he can draw a human shape, rudimentarily, now. He had me staple them together so now he has about 3 books of action scenes. We drew several together so they could "fight".

Today he made several little post-it notes with letters drawn on them, which he asked me to "read" -- then he had me staple them together, too. He's been carrying the book around asking people to "read" them.

His attention span for read-alouds seems endless -- it is a matter of me finding the time (which I need to make into a priority) rather than him getting bored.

As for Aidan -- I have been putting out the HWT letterforms daily -- which he enjoys -- and also we invented a game where he chants the months of the year and counts them off on his fingers -- he LOVES this -- loves the sounds of the words. He also can recite his whole name, where he lives, and phone number, which is a good skill for this age --at least, they always made a big push to teach this at the primary level in the older kids' parochial school years.

Progress Notes

A couple of weeks ago we got a new car, a bright red SUV which seats seven. As a consequences, Aidan has rediscovered his old fire engine, which has roughly the same shape and color as the Dodge Durango.

He found an old play house of Clare's which has been neglected for so long that I had it in the Goodwill pile.

So at first he was playing the game "driving the Durango into the garage."

A bit later he discovered that the back hatches open just like it does on the Durango. So he stuffed a couple of duplo blocks in the back, which is exactly what Kevin does when he drives to town to go shopping.

Today he discovered while washing the real Durango, that there is a spare tire under the carriage of the car. So now he has put a broken yo-yo, that is shaped like a tire, in the back of his firetruck.

All evening he has been saying, "The coolers are in the back of the car. We're going to Costco." and "Now we're going to Mass," and "It's time to go to college to see Liam." He came up pretending to hold things in his arms and said, "Where does the chicken go? Where do the eggs go?" I realized he was imitating his siblings who ask when they are unloading the groceries.

It is nice to see this....pretend play getting more and more sophisticated.

August: new books strewn for Paddy

So far he's asked to read all of them, several times, except Mike Mulligan and Strega Nona. Oh well -- I'm sure we'll get to those ones eventually. He seems to go for animals on the cover.

Learning Log, and Random Notes on Goals

Sean and Kieron are still reading Harry Potter.

Sean has had daily football practice.

We had a story meeting yesterday. Clare read a section of "The Fox", I read a bit of my Oldhaven story, and Liam read from his story about the firrels. He has finished the first part (out of three) in this story, which has grown into a novelette-sized entity.

An incidental learning note: Paddy has been having a bit of trouble sitting through stories. He still asks me to read but he gets squirmy. Could be convalescence or could be the extra juices and sodas and screen time around here during the sickness. Books read included: Magic Spectacles, Miss Suzy -- hmm, blocking on the rest. It was cute though -- after listening to Miss Suzy he shouted, "Will you go peacably, or must we fight you?" (quote from the book).

Anyway, today's the last day of open season on the TV, since everyone is pretty much recovered. And we can stop keeping the OJ and soda factories in business. So we'll see if the restlessness is environmental or just developmental.

The kids did their weekly jobs. I need to revise those for next schoolyear but am having trouble knowing where to start. SO: I'm going to list the little regular jobs I find myself doing about once or twice a week. Those will be the ones that aren't on their chore chart lists. I also want to figure out a way to delegate some of the monthly deep cleaning jobs a bit better. In the past, with a complicated pregnancy and new (ill) baby, I used to reserve Thursdays for that and make a list of jobs to assign; perhaps we can go back to that.

Random academic goals
(I'm going to list them as they come hoping they will reach a critical mass and fall into place):

Extend Aidan's reading scope (or rather listening scope). I am thinking a loose FIAR type approach similar to this one I described in Paddy and His Books. Aidan likes familiarity and repetition.

I also think continuing simple poetry and word books and pattern books (which he loves and are in his comfort zone) as ways to move into reading.

This is just an idea in the back of my mind. I have been discerning about Montessori, since Aidan loves hands-on. I have a couple of the Hainstock books which I intend to use for inspiration. But, and I've made a deal with myself, ONLY for inspiration. I seem to have problems with my perfectionism here -- I've hesitated to use Montessori at ALL because I don't understand the big picture and I think I wouldn't be doing it RIGHT. But I want to focus on the idea of "presentations" for now because this does seem to have a vein of richness to it, to me (sorry to be all intuitive but I almost always have better results when I follow this kind of golden thread).

So to put it in action terms: Learn about and try to apply the idea of presentations, and record results.

Enough for now!