Homeschooling in California

In response to all the toy recalls for lead paint in 2007, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (aka, the CPSIA).  It requires all children’s products (defined as any product designed, marketed toward, or appealing to those 12 and under) be tested by a 3rd party lab for lead and phalates (that bad stuff that softens plastics.)  It all sounds well and good.  None of us want harmful substances in our kids toys.  But there are problems with this law.  Big problems that have gotten surprisingly little press so far.

There are some really good blogs about the problems from those in the children’s toys and apparel industry, but I’m going to share a couple links to a more impartial source, Forbes.com.  They do an excellent joy of explaining how a good idea went so wrong:
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2009/01/22/cpsia-waxman-cpsc-oped-cx_wo_0122olson.html

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2009/01/16/cpsia-safety-toys-oped-cx_wo_0116olson.html

So what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with homeschooling?  Well, this law affects all products made for kids, so it therefore affects parents since it directly affects or choices as consumers.  But that isn’t the only homeschool issue here.

While the CPSIA is a direct reaction to recalled imported toys That were breaking already existing lead paint laws I might add.), it does not only regulate imported toys.  It regulates ALL children’s products.  Clothes, books, science kits, toys, art supplies, etc., etc.  Many smaller manufactures cannot afford the testing costs of hundreds to thousands of dollars per item.  Even if the items are made from supplies that have already been tested and certified lead-free, this law requires that the finished product be retested again at additional expense.  Some homeschooling books are published in small batches since it’s a fairly niche market.  Can they afford the additional testing costs?  If they do, you can bet the price for all the stuff we use and love is going to go up.

The scope of the CPSIA even covers libraries and thrift shops.  Children’s books may be disappearing from the library.  We may soon not be able to donate or buy used kid clothes and toys to Goodwill.  If you think I’m overreacting, visit the American Library Association website.  The country’s librarians are not happy: http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?cat=4

I urge everyone to read the Forbes articles to better understand these issues.  Then please write to your representatives and ask for common sense changes that will allow our children to be safe without destroying American companies that have always been consciencence about their products.

There are tons of books out there for parents about homeschooling, but not so many for kids.  I was listening to a homeschool podcast a couple months ago, and there was an author being interviewed, Rain Perry Fordyce.  She’s written a very cute picture book for kids about homeschooling.  The book is called “I am Learning All the Time” and is illustrated by Audrey Anne Miles Churney.

Being different can be tough on kids, and homeschoolers are different just because most people still send their children away to school.  Having a book that tells their story, that says homeschooling os normal, that lots of families do it, and that it’s good, I thik is very validating and reassuring for a child.  One thing I like about this book is the positive tone.  I tells the story of a 5 year old homeschooled boy and what he does at home compared to what some of his regular school friends do in school.  It doesen’t make any judgments about which way is better.  It doesn’t trash public schools.  It just shows that ther are different, and equally acceptable ways to do things. 

And from the kid point of view, I think Hannah would also give it a good rating since she asked for “I am Learning all the Time” as her bedtime story for at least 5 days in a row when we first got it, and frequently ever since. 

Another aspect that impressed me as I listened to that interview was what lengths Ms. Fordyce had gone to in order to keep the publication of her book as eco-friendly as possible.  She tracked down special a special publisher that would be able to print in the most environmentally friendly manner.  This is a self published book, and probably not available all over the web.  She specifically mentioned that they chose not to offer it on Amazon.  I ordered my copy directly from her at her website:

http://homeschooladventurebooks.com/

There is even an option to get an autographed copy there, so I couldn’t resist doing so. 

I have really been trying to wait until we completely finished the Alpha-Phonics reading program before writing my review of it, but I just don’t want to wait anymore.  Even if we stopped the program right now, I’d be thrilled with it.  I may not be too sure of my choices when it comes to a lot of areas of homeschooling, but I’m very proud of the decision to buy the Alpha-Phonics book.

 When we started using the Alpha-Phonics reading program, my daughter knew all her letters, but still got a few letter sounds confused.  She hated practicing learning her letter sounds though, so I gave up working on that with her.  Glad I did too.  I’ve since learned that she has to have a sense of purpose in what she learns or she won’t get it.  Memorising a bunch of letter sounds felt pointless to her, but learning to read was worthwhile.

I spent a lot of time researching different programs before deciding on Alpha-Phonics.  The reasons I picked it over other books, or more elaborate programs was that it fit my budget (about $25 compared to about $160 or so for Hooked on Phonics), and that it was so simple.  As I mentioned in another post once, I tried reading the “Bob” books with my daughter to see if she was ready or interested in learning to read.  She tricked me for 3 books into thinking she could read because she knew her letters well enough to get an idea of how each word started, then faked the rest from the pictures.  Alpha-Phonics doesn’t have any pictures, so I know when she reads a word, she is really reading it.

It isn’t a super quick program.  We started last summer, and read about a lesson a day or so, taking off some days to do other reading, and we’ll be finishing at the end of this month.  Early on in the book there are some lessons that are several pages long.  We usually cut these into smaller chunks because they were too boring for Hannah all in one big chunk, but other than that, she was reading from the first lesson.

I think you can probably find copies of Alpha-Phonics for sale at several online bookshops, but if you go to the official site: http://www.alpha-phonics.com/ you can download the first 5 lessons for free to give them a try.  That’s what helped me decide to use this program.  I didn’t have to do any preparation besides getting the book out and turning to the next lesson.  Hannah just read it, usually without any instruction, but sometimes I have to explain a new phonics rule to her.  That’s it.

Now everywhere we go, she’s reading signs, and reading on her own at home, only coming to me if she runs into words she has trouble with.  I can tell she’s going to love reading.  It’s so wonderful to see.

Another serise of early reading books we like are the “Step Into Reading” books, and other similar titles. There are at least two different publishers that make these type of books, but their levels and reading difficulty are very similar. We loved the level one books that also included pictures inside the text. There is a simple story, and some of the main words that will repeat throughout the book have a picture with them. Characters are used this way a lot, there’s a picture of the character with their name written underneath each spot in the story instead of just the character’s name appearing. We used these when we first started introducing reading. It allowed my daughter to ‘read’ parts of the story (I would read the words, pointing to where I was reading, and when we got to a picture, she would ‘read’ it.)

Letting her do this helped reinforce how a book was read (left to right, top to bottom), and got her to follow along with the righting instead of looking only at the illustrations as I read to her. These stories are also very simple, so now that she’s a little more advances, she is going back to these books and reading the words as well, and it helps that the stories are already familiar.

We read a lot of level 2 books now. They have simple words, although I need to help her with some from time to time as we haven’t gotten through all the long vowel rules in our phonics lessons yet. Most of these books are very commercial, which I personally didn’t like at first, but now it seems like a good thing to have books about beloved characters to really get a kid excited about the story.

Levels 3 and 4 get gradually more complicated, longer stories, and eventually move into short chapters.

 Related posts: Early Reading Books part 1: Bob books

Our Favorite Phonics Website

I mentioned our favorite website for great, fun, phonics reading stories and activities, in my post Our Favorite Phonics Website , and I’ve mentioned a few other titles my kid loves from time to time, but I thought I’d list some other great early reading books in their own posts.

First are the “Bob” books. I guess these are actually very popular books, yet I only learned about them by overhearing two other moms talking at a homeschool park day. They are very short, and are grouped in increasing difficulty. Set A is simpler than set B, and so on, then there is book, 1, 2, 3, in each set. The books are small, and the illustrations are very simple line drawings. I remember reading someplace that the drawings are intentionally very simple so that the kids can reproduce them if they want to. The first time we used a “Bob” book, we got to volume 3 or 4 when I realized my daughter had been tricking me by figuring the story out from the pictures, and not really reading the words. I think she said ‘blanket’ when the book said ‘rag’. But now that we’ve moved on to the next set, she uses the pictures for clues, but does actually need to sound out many words.

With a stack of books already in my arms, my daughter found a Lilo and Stitch book she wanted to check out at our latest trip to the library.  I almost said no, that we had enough books, but I didn’t.  I already feel sometimes like she watches too much TV (or maybe I should say DVDs) so I hate bringing home these same over advertised characters home in our reading materials too, but she asked so politely, I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

 Well, I’m glad we checked that book out.  It’s one of those “Step into Reading” books, level 2.  Hannah read it to me yesterday, struggling a great deal but refusing any assistance.  Then she wanted me to read it to her for her bedtime story.  Today she had read it to me no less than 3 times.  It feels like it takes her an hour to get through this simple story, but she loves it so much and is working so hard, I can’t help but puff with pride a little each time. 

Sure, it flies in the face of my lofty goals of beautiful classic children’s literature.  It seems silly and trivial, but I’m over that part now.  Hannah loves this book.  What could possibly be a better thing to teach her than that reading is fun and wonderful?  If all she gets out of school is a passion for reading, then I think we’ve done well.  (I’d like her to be able to add too, but you get the idea.)

Luckily, she loves the other stories I read to her as well.  I’m hoping that her infatuation with this book is really a sign that she’s growing in her reading confidence, and that having the characters be familiar and beloved only help keep her engaged long enough to get through it.  Time will tell. 

I have to go now.  She wanted to read it again to me before bedtime.  I’ll have it memorised soon.

A lot of references I’ve found recommend writing down things your child says. It shows them that you think what they have to say is important enough to record. I’ve found this to be true. When I try to get ideas out of my daughter, she has a lot more to say when I have a paper and pencil in my hand than when I don’t. She lights up with importance when I, as my daughter says, “write down my words”.

Another tip I found, was to write down stories that they tell, and then let them read them back to you later on. Even though the words may be tough to read, they are, like Hanna said, her words. Her spoken vocabulary far outstrips her reading vocabulary, so she often needs help to re-read her own stories, but at least she’s familiar with them.

We’ve done this twice so far with limited success. The first time, she really loved the idea, and ‘read’ her story to everyone she ran into for the next few days, although it was clear she had trouble with many of the words. When I asked her if she would tell me another story, she was thrilled to, but firmly told me I was not to print it out. She didn’t want to read it to anyone – it was too hard.

“How about if I read it to you?” I asked.

“Sure!” she literally bounced.

So that’s what we’ve done so far. We also cut and pasted some pictures, and I even coaxed her into drawing a few so we could turn her stories into little books. I laminated the pages and bound them with a simple comb binding. Even if she doesn’t feel comfortable reading them alone yet, she still takes pride in them, and I expect, as her reading confidence grows, she’ll enjoy these projects more and more.

As a writer and storyteller myself, I have to say at this stage I’m probably loving these writing projects more than she is!

My post about Usborne books got me thinking about other books that we, and particularly my daughter, love. She loves maps, and globes, and all related things. We have a few books that she particularily loves. I think these books are wonderful for children that love maps, but also may be a good way to introduce geography and maps to kids who don’t love them yet. After all, if you want to spark an intrest, you want the best books, right?

I wrote this entry in my other blog, so instead of rewriting the whole thing, I’m just going to link:
Our Favorite Books for Learning About Maps

But I had another thought since I wrote that entry that I also wanted to mention. Another thing we’ve done for our map loving daughter is to use Google maps. It’s an easy way to look something up, and let her see a route we’re going to drive, or where Grandma lives in comaprison to where we live, etc.

Once, we even printed out a Google map (at her insistance) of our neighborhood one evening before we went for a walk around the block. She was thrilled to carry that map along, and ask where we were on the map every few minutes. It was very cute, and she learned a lot.

These books are a great weakness of our family. They had a booth at the homeschool conference we attended in August, and we bought two books despite our plan not to spend money. Our home study program is having a Usborne book fair coming up and will earn free books form any sales. This could be dangerous for me, because I will feel like I’m supporting a good cause if I spend even more.

I was going to write an individual book review tonight, but because my daughter loves, and I mean LOVES all of her Usborne books, I figured I’d give them a general shout out.

Her favorites right now are:

See Inside Your Body – A ‘lift the flap’ book about anatomy and the human body.

See Inside Science – Another ‘lift the flap’ book that covers the bare basics of many science topics.

The History of Flight – this is an early chapter book, yet my 4 year old daughter picks this as her bedtime story often. I’m fairly bored with it, yet she continues to be absorbed in it.

A Child’s Atlas of the World – Some information about different climates around the planet, and very cool (and cute) maps of each continent as well as where each is on the globe.

The Big Book of Playtime Activities – Mostly art projects. But I like it because these projects have gotten even my anti-art daughter interested in making something.

I know they have some neat books for learning foreign languages, and those may be what I look at buying at the book fair.  But I have a feeling we’ll come away with another science book too, since that’s what our girl loves the best.