I keep forgetting to update my info here! I want to keep track of what we do for the week since that is how the AO schedule works. I think it’ll help me. I’m highlighting stuff on paper as we finish it in AO right now, but that doesn’t cover our other subjects 
We’re fully into PP3 and Primer level books now for TaCtRwCB. My son is doing great, and it sounding out and reading words that I never imagined would come so quickly!
Reading:
Introduced books:
Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs (8/13)
Writing and Speaking:
Narration of Paddle (8/13)
Literature:
Pinocchio
Geography:
Paddle-to-the-Sea (8/13)
Math:
Music:
Practiced and went through folksong “piano” book (8/13)
Daily classical music (8/13)
Art:
Worked with scissors
Practiced drawing with pencil and magnadoodle to create a look like “Lentil” and the Dinosaur Encyclopedia
History:
Civics:
Science:
National Geographic Dinosaurs book and Dinosaur Encyclopedia (8/13)
Performed experiments on energy (with balls) (8/13)
Nature Study:
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on August 14th, 2007 | No Comments »
Ahhh! Finally back into our routine. My houseguest is gone, and although it is nice to have guests, I love to get back into normal life I’ll add as we go today
TaCtRUCB:
Old book:
Follow Me
New Book:
Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb
New skills:
Remembering new phonics rules (ing, ur, er, al)
Correcting words based on the last sound
AO:
Aesop -
The Dog, the Cock, and the Fox
Belling the Cat
The Eagle and the Jackdaw
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on August 6th, 2007 | No Comments »
We have company in town, so we are still working, but I haven’t been writing about it.
Matt is consistently doing the PP3s now. Today’s new book was Bobby’s Zoo. We read Put Me in the Zoo on Wednesday. We also read two more chapters of Paddle-to-the-Sea (a favorite around here). We need to do Parables from Nature and Fifty Famous Stories sometime before Monday…
Sorry to keep it short. I’ll write more when our company is gone
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on August 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »
Today we had our first official *true* silent reading Matt has been reading dinosaur books on his own for a year or so, but he couldn’t read all of the words. Today he went over to the table where we are keeping our upcoming reads and he took one down and read the whole thing by himself silently. He’s off reading another dinosaur book now. He’s so cute. I am so excited for the world that has opened up to him through reading, and I am so very thankful that he loves reading so much.
I haven’t been keeping track of my AO books, but I’m going to add those on. So far we are loving all of them! We started Paddle-to-the-Sea today and both of the kids thought it was really cool. I’m feeling very encouraged and I am trying to figure out how I want to add in each of our other subjects. We are doing Bible stories and poetry during breakfast and lunch. I have been letting Matt do copywork sheets from a book that I found at Costco (oh haven of Charlotte Mason 
). We are doing MEP math, but more like every other day rather than daily. Music and art are easy because our music plays in the background and I made the bookmarks from the prints for last term. I think they cost me a whole dollar all together It seems to be fitting together quite nicely. I’m glad that we used last year to start working those areas into our daily routines.
I skimmed through our Teach a Chid to Read in 100 Easy Lessons …throwing up in my mouth… and saw that Matt is already to a level that is in the last third of the book. This has been so painless! Those first “Easy” lessons were like pulling teeth. I’m so glad that we’ve breezed past them!
And now, for what we covered….
New books for the day:
Go, Dog, Go!
My Friends (introduced on Sunday)
AO Year 1 book:
Paddle-to-the-Sea
New strategies:
Using the end of the word to change the sound of a known word
Sounding out without breaking the word apart first
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on July 30th, 2007 | No Comments »
Wow, another week down!
Yesterday we introduced “Follow Me”. I just found it while browsing through the shelves and thought that it had a good mix of new and old words.
Today we introduced “Good Morning, Chick”, which I also just stumbled upon. The words weren’t fabulous, but it was a good book and it has already added to his reading vocabulary.
I would put both of these books in the Level 1 readers group. Maybe PP3… Somewhere in there
New strategies used:
Figuring out a word based on the ending (woohoo!!!)
Sounding out words spontaneously
Sounding out words in his head rather than outloud
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on July 27th, 2007 | No Comments »
I am very pleased to announce that we are no longer having the of = “foo” issue It corrected itself very quickly Hooray!
We added another new book - Snow Joe - which is total poo. All of the “rookie readers” brand of books that are on the PP2 list stink. They are like the nasty readers that you often find in public schools. “Snow! Joe! Blow, Joe! Joe, go! Go, Joe, blow!”
We’re skipping the rest of the rookie reader series. I much prefer the non-twaddly books. These are the first really bad ones that I’ve seen on the list. Oh well, moving forward…
Lee commented on my last post and asked for some more info about how I structure our reading time. Here is a response that I wrote to this question when I was asked to give more details on Gentle Christian Mothers. I think it covers all of the basics and outlines our lesson pretty well. I would copy it over, but it wouldn’t make much sense without Jodi’s initial post asking me questions
So… part of why I haven’t updated this week is because we’ve started Ambleside Year 1 and we’ve been pretty busy. So far so great! The kids are loving all of the stories, even the ones that I thought might be a little challenging. We are doing Pinocchio as our current free reading, and I was able to get the version that was recommended on the Ambleside list via ILL. I am so pleased! My kids are loving Just So Stories and Our Island Story. We had started Aesop a while back, but they are still loving it too I am so pleased with the way that everything is turning out!
Feel free to ask if you have any further questions on how we schedule our reading lessons I’ll help out in any way that I can!
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on July 25th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Things are plugging right along!
This morning Matt read Bears in the Night to Joe again, and then he and I re-read It’s Spring, which is ready to be retired. After that Juli asked for us to read Too Many Balloons, which is also ready to be retired, and we added Five Little Ducks as our new book. He had no issues at all. The only word that he was caught on during the entire book was “of” because he inverts the letters and says “foo”. The same thing happens with “off”. He is fine once he thinks about it for a second though. He sounded out the word “sad”. Other than that it was probably a little too easy. Could it be PP3 time already? That’s 2 easy PP2s in a row!
Reviewed books:
Too Many Balloons
It’s Spring
Introduced the previous day and re-read:
Bears in the Night
New book:
Five Little Ducks
After we were finished reading, Juli wanted to read to me. She tried reading Too Many Balloons, but that is a bit above her level. We picked out a basic animal book (it’d be on the emergent list, I think) and she did great. I’m just not sure what to do with her. She wants to read SO badly, and I don’t want to discourage her love for reading, but I don’t want to push her either. It is really tough. Adding to the complexity is that Matt will correct her if she says something wrong (like she said “koala bear” instead of “koala”), and I don’t know whether it is better to correct him on correcting her (since he now knows its wrong) or if it is better to let him correct. I am trying to get them to read apart from each other, but they want to be together…
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on July 19th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Things are changing again
Last night Matt read Julia her bedtime story. She ate it up, and he was so proud of himself. He read Too Many Balloons to her.
This morning when I asked him to re-read a book he knew, he picked Too Many Balloons. He didn’t want to re-read any of the PP1 books. After Too Many Balloons, he picked Bears in the Night as his new book. He only had to sound out two words - lake and spook. We worked on his “L” sound since he still has to work to get his tongue to the top of his mouth to make it (so that it doesn’t sound like a “w” sound). He did an excellent job and had no problem pronouncing it clearly.
I can tell that he is no longer as interested in re-reading books a bunch of times. At first there was a huge thrill because he knew he could read those books and you could tell that he loved the reinforcement and pride that came from *reading*. Now that his confidence level has gone up and he is reading so much more, he gets that same boost from reading new books, not from re-reading older books. I am totally fine with that shift. I think it is a good sign that shows that his confidence level is going up
Books read:
Too Many Balloons
New book:
Bears in the Night
New strategies:
Sounding out words more quickly and without my help
Not using his finger under the words unless they are new or being sounded out
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on July 18th, 2007 | No Comments »
Today was a much better day as far as reading goes Last night Matt found one of his Berenstein Bears books and realized that he could read it all on his own. That was a pretty cool discovery! He was definitely proud of himself. Today we re-read the Berenstein Bear book from last night and then introduced Too Many Balloons, a PP2 book. So far so good with PP2 The Berenstein book was actually on the PP2 list, so now we’ve done three PP2s.
After we read those two books, I read more of Matt’s latest dinosaur book to him.
I’ll update if we read more today.
Previously read book:
Bears on Wheels
New book:
Too Many Balloons
On a related note, I am still waiting for the rest of my AO Year 1 books to arrive, and I am quite mad at Amazon. I placed my order on July 1. They said they’d split the shipments if that was needed. I ordered 9 books total and 4 came about a week ago. The other 5 were waiting and already past their estimated shipment date. I called today to find out why my books weren’t here and 1 book was holding up the entire order and they have no estimated date for when they’ll get that book in. I asked if they were holding my order indefinitely, and they said yes! I was so mad!
They said I had to cancel my order and re-order without that one book (which was Paddle-to-the-Sea, btw), so I did that. Then I log on and see that they split my shipment for the remaining 4 books… What in the world?!?! How could they split it when it was 4, but couldn’t send me the ones that they have in stock when my order had 5?! Rawr. I found Paddle-to-the-sea for $1.30 on half.com, but I am totally annoyed that I’ve been waiting over two weeks for nothing. RRRRRRrrrrrrrrrroar! Now the estimated delivery date for my remaining 4 books is June 23rd-ish. We shall see.
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on July 17th, 2007 | No Comments »
Matt was tired today. I can definitely tell the difference if we do our reading later in the day. I have even noticed it when he is re-reading books to dh in the evening.
We kept it short and simple since he was getting tired.
Books we had read previously:
It’s Spring
New Book:
I Like Books
And that was it! I told you it was an easy day
My plan was to have Matt start copywork today, but this morning I turned around and he was writing out “coelophysis” (the dinosaur), so I decided that was good enough, lol. He did it very precisely and I think Charlotte Mason would’ve been proud 
The kids worked on word building stuff together with the letter tiles on the kitchen floor, so I’m counting that as word building for the day. I’m trying to make some “lighter” days since he wants to read straight through the weekend.
Filed under: Daily Accomplishments on July 16th, 2007 | No Comments »
