We are a big fan of All About Reading around here. We are on level 33 of Level 1. My favorite part is that you can make each days lesson quick, easy and productive. I have a kindergartner and a 2nd grader and we just can't sit still for an hour to work on reading. While we are at the table we do some of the word cards, fluency practice sheets or reading games and then later we sit down on the couch for some reading, either me reading to them or them reading to me.
Here was our time at the table with All About Reading mixed with some handwriting practice and zoology 2 by Apologia.
The first thing I had Peter do was the duck game. We are currently working on words with the ending of ck. So a duck game goes along perfectly. There were big ducks and baby ducks and the goal was to match the big and the little duck based on the words on the back. When you found a matching pair you would put the pair in the pond.
My boys have always been better at finding matching beginning sounds but rhymes have matching end sounds. With a little bit of help he was able to figure it out.
I haven't done an open the box, let's look ahead type post in a long while. But I just have to with this theme. It's a brand new theme to Mother Goose Time's rotation and I know it will not disappoint. Mother Goose Time has a proven track record with me. We've been using it for 3 years and it always exceeds my expectations.
Last year, we were a part of a homeschool charter school. Our educational guide asked what we would be doing for science and I said "Mother Goose Time". And that's for 1st grade! But I knew that MGT would have life science and many other categories of science covered. Their experiments are always spectacular and save me from searching the internet for hours. Since we are on the topic, I have to show you one of my favorites.
Okay, enough looking back, let's look ahead. It's a whole month of science!!! Here is a glimpse at the theme web.
We've got one full week of chemistry, physics, biology, and then engineering. If we can't get this all done in August, I might just have to save it for our science lessons this coming school year. I am sorry friends and family, I will be hoarding this box for myself. :)
Why did I start this blog? Two reasons, one was to document my family and our adventures. Second, because I am one of those people that just can't stop blabbing about a product that I love. If I ran into you and I knew you were a homeschooler for instance, you would hear about two things - Mother Goose Time and All About Learning Press and their two series, All About Reading and All About Spelling.
I discovered Mother Goose Time 3 years ago and haven't stopped blabbing. But I just recently discovered All About Spelling, so let the blabbing begin!!!!
Lachlan, my oldest, is just finishing up first grade as part of a homechool charter school. We have an educational guide that we get to meet with every two weeks and at one of our meetings we were talking about Lachlan's reading and where we were getting a bit stumped. She asked me, "what about spelling?" She thought and I agreed that spelling might fill in the gaps. I for some reason, did not even think of that! Probably because I really did not want to add another subject to our routine. But we did, and I am so thankful.
It arrived and I started working through the set up. I have to say, many curricula overwhelm me. From the moment the giant Teacher Guide arrives (Saxon Math, oh my!) I shut down. Even the Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons made me shut down. There are just too many pages!!! Finally, with each of those examples I opened the book, started reading, and hey, it wasn't so bad. But when All About Spelling arrived I sighed, Ah, now that's better. The guides are thin (phew) and cute (I like that) and broken down into easily to digest sections. And this all matters because the teacher has to be motivated to teach.
First we set up the letter tiles as magnets and stuck them to our white board. Then I jumped into Step 1 and started putting the rest of the items together as I went.
Here I had the white board out in the backyard in a camp chair with all our other homeschool lessons for the day.
Each level that they progress through is literally called a step. Step 1 was all about the first 26 phonograms. I got out the phonogram cards, held them up and asked them to make the sound that each of the letters make. If they knew them, they were considered "mastered" and they got to color in the hexagon on the phonogram sheet and put the phonogram card in the mastered file. They already had many of the consonants mastered, but had some more work to do on the vowels. Some of that is because All About Learning Press (AALP) teaches more sounds for each letter than I was even aware of. Like 4 sounds for O. I don't know how to type in all the symbols or I would type them in here. But I will show you a picture of the back of the card so you can see how easy they make it for you. That and they have a free app you can download that gives you the correct sounds, if you are ever not sure.
Step 2 teaches segmenting, which is just brilliant. The best way to show you is in a quick video.
As I was revisiting Step 2 in order to make this video, I was reminded that even step 2 was broken into easy to digest parts that we did not move on from until they were mastered. First we practiced recognizing the first sound of a word and repeating the sound, not the name of the letter. Then we practiced listening for the last sound in a word. It was only after those two skills were well practiced and easy for the boys that we moved onto segmenting words with two sounds and then onto words like this with three sounds.
Step 3 has you start working with the letter tiles and putting them in alphabetical order.
Here we are outside at the picnic table, one doing that Saxon math I was mentioning and one putting the tiles in alphabetic order.
The first 3 steps can be worked on at the same time and a little part of each of the steps are incorporated into your daily routine as you start working through steps 4 through 24.
The routine and rhythm of each day is really what was great for my boys. The phonograms that were not mastered when we initially went through them were put behind the review divider. Out of those letters I would pick 4 to work on daily until they were mastered. Only 4 at a time is an easy to swallow daily lesson. Once mastered they got to color in that phonograms hexagon and file the card behind the mastered divider.
This is the little recipe box that I got for our cards. It has both the reading and spelling cards in it. Super easy to keep the cards organized.
For my boys there have been two big motivators that are part of this program. The first is the word "mastered". They love that word!!! I tell them the goal is to master a phonogram and boom, practice, practice, practice, with out complaint.
Then, to top it off, once it's mastered, they get to color in that hexagon on the progress chart! I had no idea that a progress chart would be so motivating. Not only that but it's very visual. It makes it clear what the goal is that we are working towards and how close they are to accomplishing that goal.
These are all three of our progress charts hanging on the wall.
These first 3 steps were really the foundation that the rest of the lessons are built upon. This has gotten us to where we are today with spelling words with tiles and spelling words on paper.
In this photo I said the word "bug" and Lachlan segmented it in his head and pulled down the letters that make those sounds to spell the word.
I had Peter on the other side of the table and thought I would have him try to write a few of the words on paper. But he was causing a bit of trouble by tapping the water bottle with the paint brush. Eventually he wrote three of the spelling words.
Lachlan loves to be creative, like his Mommy, and came up with this photo idea. So I helped him line up the letters in his hands and snapped a picture.
Believe it or not, he is thrilled with his idea.
At this point Lachlan wanted to be done but there was a few more words to spell. The next word was the word "sun" so I jested, "don't you want to hold the sun in your hands!" He was game.
This time I got a smile out of him.
Anything that brother does, Adam has to do. So Lachlan helped him hold a tile in his hand for a picture.
Adam always likes to get involved. One time he was adamant that he held the flash cards.
When we started All About Spelling the hope was that it would help with his reading development and it has. He has been able to sound out more challenging words because he has a deeper understanding of phonograms. He even spent some time reading our children's dictionary and felt quite accomplished by the fact that he could figure out some big words. When it comes to reading, confidence is key!
Of course teaching spelling also helps with spelling. :) Lachlan has really enjoyed writing notes and is getting more and more accurate with his writing. Here he is writing his end of the year writing example. He wrote "I HElP Mi Mom" and drew a picture of himself helping me pick things up. My back was out and I was having him help with a lot of the bending.
I wrote the team at All About Learning Press with one of my last posts where their curriculum popped up. I kept blabbing to them about how much I love their curriculum and they told me about an affiliate program. The links in this post are affiliate links. If you purchase through the links it will help my family get more of their great stuff! But everything in this post is authentic, I was writing it before I even knew there was an affiliate program.
We had such a fun day yesterday with our Mother Goose Time. We have pretty much been scraping by with the basic subjects the last few weeks with our home torn apart and our routine out the window. So to come back to MGT was a great joy. I really focus the MGT towards Adam who is just over 2 and I can do that easily with the Little Goose guide.
I had opened and not completed a few of the day bags. So I had a bit of a random selection. I chose to first look up what the Little Goose guide recommended to do with the color birds. They told us to put the birds under plastic of some sort and let the kids "wash" the birds. I used our handy dandy pouches and gave him a barely damp sponge.
I set him up on our new counter!! while I prepared lunch. Well I had to take a quick break from food to take pictures and to talk colors with him. I would name a color and he would try to find it and wash that bird.
He doesn't know his colors quite yet though. So I was more or less pointing to a colored bird, naming the color and then having him wash it.
He loved this activity!!!
After lunch we picked up where we left off. I was busy cleaning up so I told Lachlan to be the teacher. This is an awesome opportunity for him to be the "boss" which he so desires to be, at least some times.
Next I handed out the zookeeper books to all the kids. The first year we did this the boys were so young I just made the complete A to zoo zookeeper book and gave it to them to flip through. This year I gave them just the book with the first few letters and plan to give them one new letter a day as we work through all the animals.
Adam chose to write on his zookeeper book. I did not stop him because I know how great the writing practice is for him. However, 3 years ago, had Peter tried that, I probably would have taken it away from him. I wouldn't want him to ruin it. After years of using Mother Goose Time I now know that if I saved EVERYTHING that they give me I would have at least a closet full of stuff. And that's just of the things they give us that can be used over and over again.
Slowly, I have let stuff go. Some recycled and some gifted to friends who are interested in homeschooling or just wanting to have some extra fun and learning over summer break.
Adam was so concentrated on writing and he was being so careful to make small detailed marks on his page. He often scribbles and happily cheers that he "wrote my name".
After our bird washing I moved onto the camel lessons. One of them was to talk about their eyelashes and how they are used to protect their eyes from sand. Before I could even start talking about this Lachlan started describing the details of the camel including the eyelashes. He made it easy on me.
Inside the day bag for Camel day was also the Look and Find Glasses. So we got down the theme poster to take a closer look. He is really good at finding the little white mouse in a children's book series we have but he does struggle with finding the correct image from the Look and Find glass on the poster. Here we were searching for the camel and he got really close.
There it is!
Yay!!
Arms in the air celebrating.
Everyone loves the theme poster. Soon brothers were all around him.
Each month Mother Goose Time provides a blank Look and Find glass to discover all the details of the poster. It always makes for a cute photo.
We found the hippo, Lachlan's favorite animal.
I let Adam keep exploring the poster as I moved onto spelling with Lachlan. We are using All About Spelling 1 for him. He is 7 and in first grade. Here he was spelling with tiles. His spelling words were all words with U as the vowel.
Meanwhile, Peter is pounding the water bottle with the paint brush we were using as a camel eyelash example. I often have him join in with spelling. I asked him to write out the words as Lachlan spelled them with tiles. Then they can trade.
Lachlan came up with a photo idea so we arranged the letters in his hand to take a picture.
He was proud of his idea.
The next word was sun and he really wanted to be done with the lesson but I teased "don't you want to hold the sun in your hands?"
This time I got him to smile.
What ever brother does, Adam has to do. So Lachlan helped him hold a letter in his hand.
I have really enjoyed using All About Spelling and what is most important is that they boys have really thrived under their lesson design. The letter tiles that you see here are all on a magnetic white board. As part of the daily spelling routine they place the tiles in alphabetical order. The consonants are blue and the vowels are red.
When we spell with tiles I say a word, then they pull down the first letter, the second letter and then the third as they sound it out. In doing so, they have spelled the word. It's not quite as simple as that because there has been a lot of foundation laid to get us to this point. But I will have to write a whole post about All About Spelling at some point.
The All About Spelling are affiliate links. I started sharing about the program before I knew there was an affiliate program. All opinions are my own and authentic.
Since Lachlan is now 7 and craves time as "the boss", I told him he could be the teacher for this project. I sat closely by to help, but I had Lachlan pop out the beaver pieces and hand out supplies to his brothers.
Getting a glue stick ready for baby brother. Soon after this he started putting together baby brother's beaver. I had to encourage him to let Adam do it on his own.
Here Lachlan is drawing a face on his beaver puppet when he was 4.
It looks like, even when he was 4, he was helping out those in need.
Sleepy 2 year old Peter.
4 year old Lachlan finishes up his beaver puppet with drawing details on it's tail.
7 year old Lachlan is hard at work putting a criss-cross pattern on his tail. It's neat to see that when his knowledge of beavers expands, so does the detail on his puppet. Not only that but his ability to know what he wants to do and carry it out has drastically improved. Which has caused so much less frustration for my little perfectionist. I don't say that in a condescending way, he really likes to get things just right, and if he doesn't he gets really upset. I think these characteristics that may bring challenges now were instilled in him by his creator and will serve him well as an adult. We just have to work on fine tuning or refining the edges.
Next up is Peter with a little then (2) and now (5) comparison.
A little pre-writing practice going on here with some scribbles.
Peter looks quite concerned about that thing on his arm.
Now he is holding it out for me to see. Proud Peter.
I have no idea what he is doing here, but his face is just priceless. Now Peter can do pretty much everything on his own. He has had a lot of fine motor training for many years. He can prepare the glue stick and do all the gluing.
He also paid close attention to the detail of the beaver tail by drawing the criss-cross pattern on both the front and back of the tail.
Peter, now 5, is always good for a picture!
Of course we have to finish up with Adam, who is 2. I definitely can see some similarities between 2 year old Peter and 2 year old Adam, like the pre-writing scribbles.
I have to say this is not quite the post I dreamed of when comparing the two years side by side. But alas, real life happens. Our dishwasher leaked and we discovered the leak last week. Since then we have had teams of people coming in to tare our house apart. Mostly my kitchen, but the parts from the torn out kitchen were put in my dining room/classroom/office area. It has been an interesting ride. Since we just learned that it will be at least a couple of weeks until we get our kitchen back, I decided to set up shop in my bedroom, to see if I could get a little work done and have a small sense of normalcy.
Not sure if this will work, but it's worth a shot.
Oh, and have you ever done dishes in the bathroom? With a 2 year old "helping"?
