Homeschooling in California

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.

I read the term’ unit studies’ in various places, education books, and homeschool chat boards, for quite awhile before I knew what it meant. A few weeks ago, we actually used a reptile and amphibian unity study pack that our advisor gave us when my daughter asked to learn about snakes.

Basically, a unit study takes a topic that’s interesting to the child, and teaches as many subjects as possible around that topic. So, Hannah wanted to learn about snakes. So we read books about snakes (science and reading), looked at pictures of snakes, and painted and drew pictures of snakes (art), counted, sorted, and graphed all our reptile toys (math), made up a story about a snake (writing), Looked up where some snakes live on a map (science and social studies), and so on.

It was really a lot of fun. As a mom, I liked the way this type of learning combines many subjects, and shows the interconnectedness of learning. That math, for example, is relevant to other subjects. That all subjects can relate to each other in some way. I think it helps show how subjects fit into real life better than having every subject stand all alone.

That said, we were pretty well tired of learning about reptiles and amphibians after two weeks. Although, since we’ve moved on to other topics, Hannah still brings up, and wants to talk about what she learned about reptiles, so I know that unit studies can really stick with a kid.

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!

Maybe I was seeing the future in my last post, or maybe the reason I was feeling out of sorts and like our schooling was idling was because I was starting to get sick. 

The kiddo and I both got a nasty stomach virus yesterday.  Well, she got sick, literally, about three in the morning, on the carpet next to my bed.  Poor girl.  My husband and the baby had been sick two days before, but were much better.  Thankfully, my husband decided to stay home one more day to kick the last bit of virus he was carrying.  I could barely sit up in bed for more thna a few minutes at a time.  It would have been even more miserable for me to have to chase that cute, yet trouble-making, toddler around all day.

 We made a few haf-hearted attempts to do school work.  We did our reading lesson, because we could do than while snuggled together in the bed.  We started a writing lesson, but didn’t finish.

If we were homeschooling independently, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  We’d just continue on when we felt up for it.  But because we have to report to our school about what we do each day, we’ll need to make up the work.  At least we got sick on a Friday.  We have all weekend to do the rest of what I’d planned for Friday.  We’ll probably need that long too, because while I’m much better today, I’m still only operating at about 50%.  The kiddo says she’s all better, and she’s certainly running around like a healthy child, but she’s still running a small fever, so I want her to rest some today too.

 Well, it’s back to bed for now for me.  I hope today finds you well.  Hug your kids.

My daughter is learning to read right now. I stumbled on Starfall.com well before I started any formal reading instruction with her, but now that she’s learning phonics rules, we visit Starfall together to read the stories there.

I thought at first that she loved this site only because she loves to play on the computer, but she is only allowed to do it for a short time, and not every day. It was bonus computer time – what’s not to love? Now I know that isn’t it. She has plenty of computer games that she doesn’t care for, even ones featuring some of her favorite cartoon characters. But she loves the Starfall stories, and works really hard to read each story by herself.

The stories in the section we use the most, Learn to read, are arranged by what phonics skill they work on, like the short ‘a’ sound, etc. It makes it easy for me to find a story that will compliment what we are learning about, and that she’ll be successful reading on her own.

The stories all can be read by the computer too, if you want. It starts by just displaying each page, but if you click on a word, it will show you how to sound it out. So there’s help for any words that she needs it for.

There are other, more advanced, reading sections too. We haven’t done much there yet, but I’m sure we will eventually. There is also a preschool section for learning letters and letter sounds. You can even print out writing worksheets that go along with the stories.

There are also some other activities there too, but learning to read, and phonics seem to be the main focus of the site. Last week we talked about calenders and the days of the week, and we made a calender at Starfall. I was disappointed that I didn’t see an obvious way to print out the calender my daughter made, but the game really did help her get the days of the week straight in her mind.