MFW - K resource

This is a post I did on my craft blog www.middnightcrafters.blogspot.com some years ago and I still get request for the resources I have used.  So I am sharing the the post and the resources.

The links for the lesson plans and the labels are here;

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pYZQxVFj8to5Azb9EvdKDQBTtJrLGuQQu43Ggzqq0Q4/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Auw85gsvynTxGjjX9YZtWXpwIwN8zGQrOc1zO9AGL2E/edit
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnqGTLlrhNmEdGpEaWthOV80YjQtMnZ1RHBnV2prTXc#gid=0

Organizing the MFW-K day

    






We are into our official homeschool year.  We started somewhere in May, right after #4 birth and took until the end of June to finish the first week.  Oh, I was feeling some fear that maybe I was in over my head.  My thought was that even though I have this great passion and desire to homeschool my children, what happens if I never get to it in our day.  well, we are getting better and of course, we still have no real set routine yet.  I hope by Christmas, we will find it or maybe Santa will bring me one.
As we are moving forth in the lessons, I am excited that I am coming together mentally with the planning and physically with keeping it together.  I will say, right now we are homeschooling either on the living room floor or at the coffee table.  I do not have some awesome cool, eat your heart out classroom.  I am going to make a makeshift display area over our tiny dinner table to help us review and gloat over our hard work.  I had hoped to use the bulletin board squares that you tape up, BUT the darn things keep falling down.  SO I am patiently waiting for my husband to make a board to put them on.
Here is our stuff!

Calendar. Part of our morning routine is to put the date on the calendar.  I originally bought a calendar set from the Dollar Tree and had it all together on a poster board.  Having only a few places to hang it and having guest knocking it down, I opted to get rid of it.  I found this little gem at Staples for $3.
A small hiccup it that #3 likes to erase the numbers when no one is looking.

I don’t actually mind, because now #1 is getting a lot of practice writing the numbers. Bad mommy?

I took the example by Melanie at www.treasuresunseen.blogspot.com and set up all my unit lessons like she did.

I love being part of the My Fathers World Kindergarten – Yahoo group.  Group members share files and ideas and help with keeping the mommy’s chin up.  In that group, there is a weekly summary of each unit study.  So I print mine and put the week we are working on attached to a clipboard.  I also clip the pages we will work on behind the summary.
  The generous mom who made this, created a somewhat standardized form that she added weekly details.  One thing to note about MFW-K is that it operates like a letter of a week program that is combined into a unit study and submerged into the bible.  For that, I am in bliss to teach my children this program.
Now I never meant to do this but my daily workbox just came to be and is working fine for now. In it I have:

• tactile numbers
• teacher manual
• bible
• box of crayons
• box with scissors, glue, pencils
• letter box (this is the envelope box, plan to make it pretty later)
• 3-hole punch
• paper items for the next craft project
• books from the library that go along with the study
• a game (cooties mini version from wal-mart) to celebrate the end of our lesson for the day. [I am finding that ending with a game helps motivate us to stay on task and helps me to remember to have fun]

Now I can not forget that I have to keep a portfolio of #1 work.  So here is a 3-ring binder from one of my college courses.





We are moving along.  And I am already amazed at what I am seeing.  #1 is very good at knowing the sounds of letters, so we should be moving into blends rather soon.  #2 is really pleasing me.  We are using this year as his Pre-k, so I plan for him to do a lot of just sitting in.  Well he is very determined to do things perfect.  He is more than happy to do what ever #1 is doing and I believe he would try to take over her work.  I think the most important task for him right now is to just sit back and listen and mimic her. I hope #1 gets just as excited.  She is doing it to please me, she is a pleaser.  But I also know given the chance, she would much rather be doing something else.  I hope as the routine gets more in place, she will come around.
~trish

Phonemes versus phonics

Alright, before this week I had no idea what a phoneme was.  Do you?  So there is this little known secret to the outside world that reading is made up of to very important functions that must work together, phonemes and phonics.  In homeschooling mommy terms, your ears must know what it is hearing in order for your mouth to read it. Hmm, could this have been my own personal delay in my comprehension, we could only wonder.

Sorry, I diverged. So a little catch up.  Yes, I am still stumbling my way through homeschooling my 1st and K kids ,while managing the destruction from a 1 and 3 year old.  I guess I am eclectic by nature in my educating method. Right up until last Monday night, I have felt very overwhelmed.  I then realized, I really need a scope and sequence.  I can teach my kids anything, I know it, I just need to know what and when.  In desperation, I called a friend who was a school teacher and said HELP!  I am so overwhelmed and when I read the state standards, I am humbly overwhelmed that I do not speak that language.

I was directed to several different county links that have provided a Plain English scope and sequence per grade and peace began to wash over me. So over the past week, I have re-organized, because some of my frustration was a geography thing in my home.  I have let go and began to move forth.  Patience, the details of my reorganizations will be shared at another time.

So back to my point, within the Language Arts discipline for both K and 1st is a section on Phonemic Awareness and Phonics.  Hmm, awareness and they miss spelled phonics (ha,ha higher education). I was a bit on the thought of, well isn’t that all r-e-a-d-i-n-g, but apparently not.  You see reading is comprised of understanding what you hear and then being able to reproduce it from written form.  As much as this can make sense, it is a lot like flour and water make glue, but add an egg and you got cake.  Actually, that is very appropriate.

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From: http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php

Phonemic Awareness (PA) is:

1. the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words and the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of speech sounds (Yopp, 1992; see References).
2. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes. Without phonemic awareness, phonics makes little sense.
3. fundamental to mapping speech to print. If a child cannot hear that "man" and "moon" begin with the same sound or cannot blend the sounds /rrrrrruuuuuunnnnn/ into the word "run", he or she may have great difficulty connecting sounds with their written symbols or blending sounds to make a word.
4. essential to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system.
5. a strong predictor of children who experience early reading success.

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An important distinction:

• Phonemic awareness is NOT phonics.
• Phonemic awareness is AUDITORY and does not involve words in print.

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And this is what they have to say about teaching it!

Phonemic Awareness is a critical component of reading instruction but not an entire reading program. It absolutely needs to be taught, but should only be 10-15 minutes per day of your reading instruction.

Teachers increase effectiveness when the manipulation of letters is added to phonemic awareness tasks. Phonemic awareness is an auditory skill, but once children start to become familiar with the concept, teachers can introduce letter tiles or squares and manipulate them to form sounds and words.

Phonemic awareness needs to be taught explicitly. The instructional program must show children what they are expected to do. Teachers must model skills they want children to perform before the children are asked to demonstrate the skill.

If you focus on just a few types of phonemic awareness, you get better results. There are a lot of skills in phonemic awareness, but research has found that blending and segmentation are the 2 critical skills that must be taught. Instruction must focus on blending and segmenting words at the phoneme, or sound level. This is an auditory task.

Research has found that you get better results when teaching phonemic awareness to small groups of children rather than an entire class

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As you look further into Oregon’s Big Idea Lessons, they illustrate the best methods.  In Florida, there is a great website that has lots of PDFs to print about all aspects of Phonemics, but my internet keeps timing out, maybe you will have better luck. www.fcrr.org

There are tons of information that can help you practice these skills, see http://www.readingresource.net/phonemicawareness.html

And as wikipedia will tell us Phonics is then taking letters to form the Phonemics, so we can read, see.

phon·ics/ˈfäniks/

Noun:

A method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system.

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So where do we begin, well as a mom, make it fun. So we are going to play a game.  I am going to go to use a list of words, mostly cvc words. (cvc is consonant vowel consonant, like cow, mom, man, cat, dog)

With my list, I am going to say the word to my 1st grader and have her isolate the first, middle and final one syllable sound. To my K I am going to say the word the word 2 times and sometimes change one sound at the beginning, end or middle.  He will tell me same or not.

So it would go like this.

ME: Miss first grader, Please tell me the beginning sound of dog?

1ST: dog begins with /dddd/

ME: what is the middle sound for dog?

1ST: /ooooo/

ME: And the final sound?

1ST: /gggggg/

ME: great job!  Here is a skittle.

ME: Mr. Kindergartener, are these two words the same or different, dog/log?

K: Different.

ME: Which word is different from these 3: dog/dog/log?

K: log

ME Great job, have a skittles!

So that is what I am doing this week, let’s see how it goes.  It seems such a simple task, but none the less, an important one.  Doing it together, I plan to only do it for about 10-15 minutes.  And then we move on.

So did you know about phonemic awareness?

~Trish

Grade School Workbooks from the Store

So it has been a few weeks since I have got back with you.  We are slowly moving back in line with our routine.  Trying out that new school really threw a monkey a wrench in sense of order.  Somehow after 3 weeks, we are finally looking some form of normal, well normal to us.

Of course, we are still finding what works for us.  The freedom that comes with being able to find what works best, also leads to a lot of time searching.  Daddy had a lot of issues of not “seeing” enough done, so I had to institute a worksheet attack on my kids.  Poor little things.  To provide a large amount of comfort, I picked up a complete curriculum from the big warehouse store for under $10.

I really like this workbook set.  I also have the one for Kindergarten.  Of course, I realize after writing in them it is 100%, A OKAY!  to reproduce. I like so many things about the book, except the reading comprehension.  I find that the writing within the reading comprehension section is weak, wordy, unfocused, and wandering.  I really like the way that the text is presented and it makes for a great work book.  Next issue, apparently it is now Out Of Print and there are not many copies available ANYWHERE. If I collect an entire elementary school set of them it would probably be well worth it and cost only $100.

Now here is my confession.  This is my opinion and is meant for only my own self reflection.  I feel like I am not being a “good” homeschool mom by using this as a core to my teaching.  They are great books and for the money, they are superb!  BUT!  I envision a homeschool mom knowing the special handshake, flashing an awesome homeschool club ID card to get into the most exclusive backroom curriculum stores in the figment of my imagination.  This is where they sell the hidden style of teaching and books to go with it, that really work.

Let’s face it, these kids are not going to teach themselves and we mommas have got to figure out what works for them, us, and the budget.  Expensive shine text books and programs do not make smarter kids. 

So currently, I am ripping pages out and sticking them under my kids noses to do.  Lots of writing and a bit more structured.  Now being almost 2 weeks into doing it, they are getting the hang of it.  And the daddy is getting compliant again, so it most be getting better.

Logistics – It really comes down to the logistics for me.  We are 2 months in, we haven’t really nailed ourselves down to a set curriculum yet.  (i.e., each week it is something new, it seems.)  How could this workbook work for us? 

• Well, the core of what we need to do with them is covered. It is keeping us progressing at level with minimal effort from me, so score! 
• It allows me to have a better view of what they really are understanding and not, so we can further work on it. 
• Although it takes up more of their time right now, it is freeing up my mental ability to work on more fun things for them.
• Plus, we still stay on track when the baby takes up my primary attention.

So it works for us at 1st grade and kindergarten.  I whole heartedly want to gobble up the other books and add them to my library, but part of me knows that it is questionable if I will finish up the year with them, much less use them again next year.

~trish

What is your take on these workbooks?

Frequency Words – Set 1

 

Realizing we really DO need to be learning the high frequency words for both my 1st grader and Kindergartener, I stole the practice from my daughter’s school last year.  Hehe, being the unschooler (more for the fact that I hate to pay for too much, I also got the word list from her school).

Now they call them Popcorn Words, we call them Happy Meal Words!  See at school when they complete a sheet, they would get a bag of popcorn on Friday.  Well, a bag of popcorn is a regular around here, so what would be so special in that? Thankfully, McDonalds has their Happy Meals on Sale every Tuesday and Thursday for $1.99. 

We are reviewing these words every day.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we review them with a highlighter.  I highlight them if they know them, once the chart is filled, it is HAPPY MEAL time.  Yes, I really will just buy the ONE kid a Happy Meal, the others will just have the usual, McDouble, Apple pie and water.

Here is our first set for both K and 1st.  Of course, I made these after I made my kids.  They are set as 4 by 6, so you can print as a picture and put in a $1 flip book.  Or you can print as half a page.  I used scrapbook paper to make a folder and then printed as half a page.  As they progress, I will staple another page on top, so we can easily review all our sets each week.

 

Being so sweet!  I made a set of blanks so you can make your own. in the same format.   

I will have the other sight word list later.

Enjoy!

~trish

For the Love of Phonics!

I am a firm believer of phonics versus sight words.  My general theory is phonics is a superior form of reading.  That was what I once believed and thought to be true.  Today, a new thought came to mind.  Some kids just can’t blend.

My dear son, is struggling and I am aware and assessing what can be done better. For background, the kid is a logical thinker with the ability to solve any puzzle.  Unfortunately, I think his speech is part of our problem.

Here we go, daughter number one took a month or two to understand how to bring the letter sounds together to make a word.  Since then, she has become a great reader and attempts to sound out most everything.

My son is not.  We are doing the Bob book methods and are at a snails pace.  I am very aware that we will be slow, slow for a while; then all of a sudden one day it will all just click.

Using the teaching with bob method, we have introduced a, m, t, and s.  We built at, mat, and sat. We read pages 1 and 2.  Mat. Mat sat.  Those three words were a chore.  So I set it all aside, keeping these little exercises to 10 minutes. 

Today, I was hoping for a little more.  We used the same letters, reviewed our at based words and built am and Sam. We reread pages 1 and 2, then added 3 and 4.  Sam. Sam sat. He was frustrated.

From these 2 days, this is what I now understand. My son cannot blend the sounds past 2 letters.  Hurray, he can read at, but that is it. It seems like he can’t hear the sounds to register the word that he is saying.  Now I really think this goes back to his speech. 

His articulation has more to do with knowing when to breath when he says each word, or he is taking breathes during the words.  So as he sounds the letters out, he takes breathes that then confuses his listening for the word.  Of course, this is my unprofessional, but practical assessment.

What’s a mom to do? Well, my first instinct is to throw this plan out the door and search the shelves for something new, but that would be ineffective.  I would spend every week and a half looking for something new.  My best bet is to tweak our method to teach phonics.  So this is what I am going to try:

1. I am throwing out the notion that we must sound out these words to read them and replacing it with a sight word memorizing method. yikes!

2. Introduce the root phonically.  Teach the word by sight and review the sounds in the word. So at, is sounded out.  Mat is sight with review of m-at. Do this for all the words, move on once all words in the book are known by sight. Mat, sat, Sam, and on.

Here is my hope, once we are a few books in, the sounding out notion will start to click in his mind.  Then once it clicks, we can go back and review the phonic structure of the word.

I also plan to use the tools by www.1plus1plus1equals1.com for learning sight words.  She has a great sight word program called You Can Read with printables (FOR FREE) that gives the kids a hands on approach to learning 4 sight words at a time. So I have them printed and will be introducing the 4 words from the Bob book and the words in set 1 (a, and, see, the).

I sure hope this works.  I just don’t want to burn him out on 4 words, just because he cannot blend or hear the sounds correctly. Please if you have any advise, I am all ears.  I truly think he will just be a slow to read kid like his parents, but I do not want him to lose his love of books because of it.  I also noticed, he does not have a good reading comprehension to retell a story after hearing it.  It seems as though he is a visual and hands on learner.

By the way, 1st grade daughter #1 is doing awesome.  I should do a post on how amazing she is doing.

~trish

Phonics – Bob Books – Just beginning

So, here we are already leaving our Phonics program to try something else.  So #2, Mr. Clown, is hard to deal with when it comes to reading out of a manual or workbook.  SO my dragging him through the mud with the Distar Reading program Teach your child to read in 100 lessons is not working!  It is not the method, it is the delivery.

So happy, I just came a cross Brandy at www.teachingwithbob.blogspot.com

She has lesson plans to progress your new to reading through the bob series with intentional reading.  We are going to start this next week.  She has phonics sounding, word building and reading at the first lesson.  She even helps you lay out a great notebook that can be your manual or just to record progress.

Being digital crazy as I am and looking for an excuse to use my laminator.  I decided to make cards that are just smaller than a baseball card, so when I laminate them, they will fit in baseball card sheets.  This way we can use the cards to make the words too.

Brandy lays out her method for getting started, here.

Lessons Day 1, 2, & 3

I hope this will be the nudge he needs to keep his interest.

~trish