Pros and Cons of a Sick Homeschooling Household

We were all sick last week. Ava came down with it first. She was sniffly and slightly feverish. She was achy with a sore throat. She was irritable - for her. This resulted in the children being snippy with each other. They usually get along well and the lack of harmony really grated on my nerves. If the children were in school I would have needed to keep her home. Or send her in and feel guilty and worried about her all day.

Instead we just kept to our usual routine. I leaned a little more on Michael for answers and a little less on Ava. We took more breaks. But overall, school continued. The kids like our school work and they get bored when just left on their own for too long. Ava in particular likes to be with her loved ones and so she didn't complain at all.

Michael was also irritable all week. He didn't seem to get the sore throat or fever, but he did get the runny nose and cough. Again, we just kept to a slightly less cheerful and intense version of the usual routine. The children being irritable was driving me crazy though. I felt like I was intervening in some sort of squabble at least once every 30 minutes and it was killing me. My mood was off and I was atypically grumpy and short tempered. In retrospect, I should have known I was next.

Then it was my turn. If the children felt even a fraction as miserable as I did, I am in awe of how well they had actually been doing all week. I was taking two different types of over the counter pain killers and it still felt like my throat and Eustachian tubes were on fire with every breath. This was keeping me from sleeping. I was running the same low grade fever the children had been running. The details aren't important. Let's just say that if I weren't homeschooling I would have been spending my days in bed.

Instead, I got up and got breakfast into the littles and got through our first two lessons of the day - circle time and math. At that point, instead of transitioning to reading or Scholastic News I let the children have free time and informed them that I was going to read. They could come find me when they were ready to do their reading lesson. Admittedly, that was a bit pitiful, but it worked. The children played independently for almost two hours while I dozed on the sofa. Then Ava came to ask to do her reading lesson. The rest gave me enough energy to get through Ava's reading lesson and lunch. Then it was more free play for the children until Michael came to ask for his reading lesson. At that point in the afternoon I typically read to the children for an hour or we do art, but there was no way my throat was going to participate in an hour of reading aloud so we watched a movie instead.

It wasn't elegant, but it got done. We repeated that same schedule the next day. Even though the entire household was sick, we still managed circle time, word wall activities, math, and reading every day. It wasn't as high energy, efficient, or on schedule, but it still all happened. It was a workable solution. I'm looking forward to being back to full energy and patience this week (I'm still shaking off the cold), but it was nice to see that we can work this homeschooling thing through a household illness.

Interactive Word Wall - Refining and Differentiated Instruction

We have now been using our word wall in our Pre-Kindergarten / Kindergarten level homeschool for about six weeks. I wrote about planning and creating the word wall and my intentions for using it interactively several weeks ago. I have learned a few things and refined my technique since then.

Choosing and Introducing Word Wall Words

There are many ways to use a word wall. Some choose to use their word wall to highlight content area vocabulary or with themes. My children are very young so I am using the word wall to facilitate the reading and spelling of early sight words. I am pulling most of the words from the Dolch lists. I am introducing six new words each week. Here's the key though. I'm not just going through those lists in order. I make sure the six words I choose each week can be combined to make a sentence. This is absolutely key! I print the words on plain white paper and cut them out so that you can see the word shape. Then I tape them each to a differently colored background and laminate the cards. Finally I stick a magnet on the back of each word.

1. Monday - I introduce the words on Monday during circle time. We clap and snap each word taking the time to discuss the word shape (small, tall, and fall letters - does the word look like a rectangle or squares - etc.) and how to decode the individual phonemes. Then we build a sentence from the words. We build one or two sentences that make sense and we build silly sentences that do not make sense. The children love it.
2. Tuesday-Thursday - I display one word at a time and ask my preschooler to read the word. If she has difficulty, I help her decode the word. We then snap and clap the word and its spelling. Then I have my kindergartner spell the word (he can read all the words easily, so this is how I differentiate instruction).
   
   After reviewing all six words, we continue to build sentences with the words. I use a dry erase marker and show making the first letter of the sentence a capital and adding punctuation as appropriate. The clapping and snapping the word, discussion of word shape, and decoding the words using phonics are all important, but it is using the words to build sentences that really cements them in the minds of the children. Ava gets practice reading the words in a sentence context. Michael gets to read with inflection and discuss capitalization and punctuation. We get to work collaboratively and take turns composing and reading the sentences. And we all get to laugh together at some of the nonsense sentences we create. In five minutes or less the children have practiced reading the six words at least a dozen times each and they don't even realize it.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Friday - On Friday we repeat the same routine. When we are finished, the children each take three of the words and put them in the appropriate spots on the word wall. Now these words are integrated in with the words from previous weeks and we are ready to introduce six new words during circle time on the next Monday.

Using and Practicing Word Wall Words - Daily

Each day, immediately after circle time, we do a word wall game. This can take anywhere from 5-15 minutes. The children LOVE this time of day. They remind me if I forget. I made a printable list of 15 Word Wall Games, and you can find many more with a simple internet search. I rotate through the games so we're never doing the same one twice a week. The children particularly like Tall Towers, Word Wall Tic Tac Toe, and Word Wall Word Search. Whenever appropriate, I differentiate instruction by asking Michael to spell the word while Ava only needs to read the word. I also keep track informally of which words (from the wall) that they know well and which ones they still need practice on and try to rotate in the ones they need more practice with more often.

Does it work?

Let's think of having a word wall in a classroom as a three stage process.

1. Part 1: Teacher creates a word wall space, chooses words, and gets those words onto the wall alphabetically.
2. Part 2: Teacher chooses new words each week and devotes class time to introducing the words and reviewing them daily.
3. Part 3: Teacher devotes additional daily classroom time to having children work with the word wall words interactively in a game format.


Part one is something a teacher does when starting a word wall project. In theory, the wall could be set up and a full year's worth of words could be prepared. Then each week the teacher could throw up 4-6 new words and be done. I devoted the time to setting up the word wall and making a couple of months worth of words. If all I did was slap six new words on the wall, or have the children slap six new words on the wall, no one would learn them. Part 1 alone? - Not enough.

The children and I typically enjoy the word wall work we do during circle time. We like the clap and snap and the building of the sentences. A lot of learning takes place during this interaction. One week, I simply forgot to do this two days in a row and noticed that my daughter struggled more with the words that week. Part 1 and Part 2? Adequate for familiarity and some automaticity, but not for true mastery.

Then there was the week I was going through a bit of a homeschooling teacher slump and decided to skip the word wall games. I was a little bored with them and preferred to just skip straight to math. I noticed a huge change. Ava definitely lost ground with the old words. As soon as I brought back in the word wall games and devoted those 5-15 extra minutes a day I saw huge change. And the children LOVE this time. Call it a "break" and stick it in between two more intense activities, but this time is worth it. My four year old daughter can look at our word wall and read every word on it. She's proud and she thinks it is fun. All 3 Parts? This works!



Word Wall=Sight Words - But what about phonics?

I strongly support phonics instruction. Research shows that phonics instruction is a critical component of reading instruction. Our All About Reading program is doing an amazing job of comprehensively teaching phonics to my children (and fluency and sight words - the program is extraordinarily comprehensive). However, knowing some of the most common words encountered in reading the English language by sight is a huge boost to a beginning reader. It helps them read more quickly and easily. Also, many of the words on the Dolch lists are "rule breakers" that do not follow phonics rules and including them on a word wall gives a teacher the opportunity to talk about that. I do talk about the phonics of these words during instruction time and about how and why the reading of the words break phonics rules when that is the case.

Super Reading and The Magic Tree House Books

I'll admit it. I was struggling in the afternoons. Our mornings are fairly structured. Time goes quickly. We get a lot done. Circle time, word wall games, math, Scholastic News, and our reading program fill the morning. Then, about 4 hours after we started, we are all ready for a significant break.

I let the kids watch some tv while I prepare lunch. Then I let them eat lunch in front of the tv while I have some quiet time. I know it isn't perfect, but I'm human and an introvert and my sanity is important too. So we all have a mid-day break and I do use the television to make that happen. The problem was that I was having trouble finding the motivation to pull us all back together afterwards. I found excuses to delay... and delay... and delay. Then I had an ephiphany. I realized that we needed something truly fun to pull us all back together - something that made me glad to leave my little bit of solitude and something that made the children excited about turning off the television.

So now I read to the children in the afternoons. It's not a lesson. Michael isn't reading or taking turns reading. They simply get to listen to me read. I'm not feeling rushed like I often feel during the reading time that is part of our bedtime routine. If we're all enjoying it we can just keep reading. We often read for 60-90 minutes in the afternoon and we all love it. Michael calls it "Super Reading Time".

One of the purchases I indulged in with my first Scholastic Reading Club order was a Magic Tree House book set. We now are the proud owners of books 1-45. (If you want the full set, the best price per book by far is from the Scholastic Reading clubs. Any library should have these books too.) The main characters are an older brother and a younger sister who are only a year apart - just like my two. The older boy is conservative and loves books and knowledge. The younger girl is imaginative and adventurous and loves animals. I think part of the reason the children love the books so much is because they identify with Jack and Annie. Michael has even started using some of the phrases that Jack frequently uses in the books. I'm not super fond of the phrase, "Is she nuts?" but hearing him imitate Jack is pretty cute.

The stories are about two children who discover a magic tree house in the woods near their house. The tree house is filled with books. When they point to a picture in the book and wish to travel there the tree house takes them to the location (and time) of the picture in the book. So far, there are story arcs that bridge several books. In each of the first four books they discover a clue about the owner of the tree house and they meet her at the end of the fourth book. At the beginning of the fifth book they discover that the tree house's owner has a spell cast on her and they have to collect four things to break the spell. They collect those four things over the course of their adventures in the next four books and then rescue her at the end of the eighth book. We've just started it, but the story arc for books 9-12 appears to be Jack and Annie answering four riddles in order to pass the test to become "Master Librarians". The children enjoy the individual stories, but they also very much enjoy the story arcs as well and definitely keep track of the progress Jack and Annie are making towards the larger goal.

Each book is 10 chapters. In each story they travel to a new location in time or space and there is a lot of science and social studies content embedded in the books. That is a great bonus while homeschooling. We read half a book (5 chapters) each day so it takes us two days to read each book. Many of the books also have a nonfiction companion book. So, for example, the fictional story "Mummies in the Morning" has a nonfiction companion book "Mummies and Pyramids". The nonfiction books are fairly dense with a great deal of interesting information. They are written from the perspective of Jack and Annie with the story being that when they got back from Ancient Egypt they wanted to know more about it. So they went to the library, learned more about it, and wrote this book to share the information with other children. I tried the Fact Trackers on a whim. I was almost positive the reading level would just be too high for my 4 and 5 year old, but they seem to like them. So each day we read 5 chapters of the next Magic Tree house book, and then a couple chapters of a Fact Tracker book about one of the fictional books we've already read. So far we've done "Knights and Castles" and most of "Mummies and Pyramids."

Another great thing about reading this book as a series is the Magic Tree House companion website. There you can print out a passport. Each time you finish a book you can earn a passport stamp by answering three questions about the story. My children LOVE this. You can also earn passports for the Fact Tracker nonfiction companion books. The site also has a game where you can complete missions by answering questions about four different books (earning a clue for each answer) and then solving a puzzle at the end. You earn a medallion for each successfully completed mission. This part of the website fascinates my children and I would love to let them do it. Unfortunately, the missions seem to choose randomly between ALL the books. If they would limit it to just books the children have already read (ones they've earned passport stamps for) then you would be able to play the mission game and begin to earn medallions no matter how many of the books you've read. As it is, we can't really play that game at all.

"Super reading" and the Magic Tree House books have completely transformed our afternoons. Now we all look forward to the time after lunch and we come back together for some snuggly reading time on the sofa together. It has become a really special time of our homeschooling day.

Scholastic News Classroom Magazine: from a Homeschool Perspective

I subscribed to the first and second grade editions of the Scholastic News Magazine for this school year. I added Science Spin on to the subscription for each. Now, fair warning. I thought I was going to be able to subscribe for the stated price of $4.49 per student + $0.99 cents for Science Spin. I found out that you only get that price if you are ordering for 10 or more students. When you want to order a single copy, you must call the 1-800 number and they charge significantly more. I don't recall what the price was since I ordered 4 or 5 months ago, but I'm going to guess it was something like $15 or so per subscription.

It was completely worth it. If you subscribe to Scholastic News and Science spin, you get 5 magazines per month (one Scholastic News per week and 1 Science Spin per month). The "magazines" are only 4 pages long. You have the cover, a two page spread in the middle, and an activity/review on the back. The topics are usually science or social studies oriented. They are supposed to increase in complexity and language level over the course of the school year. My kids LOVE them. That's not even the best part though.

As part of the subscription you get access to Scholastic News online. There you can find teacher's guides, printable worksheets, and online versions of each magazine. The online version of the magazine can be read at the regular reading level, or switched to a lower reading level. There is at least one video and sometimes more that is associated with each magazine and the final page of the magazine (the activity page) is interactive and can be completed online. There is also an online "game" for every magazine which is really a learning activity/review.

The online site for each grade level also has access to the digital versions of the past two year's worth of magazines and all the videos and printables. You can easily do a magazine a day online. I find that the children adore sitting down at the computer for our Scholastic News magazine time.

Eventually, you will need to log in to access the Scholastic News online content, but the site is completely open through the end of September. Check it out. Use it between now and then. If you like it, you can call and subscribe for the rest of the school year. We've even used a couple of the digital versions of the Grade 3 magazines while they're accessible for free.

I like that the magazines are a fun way to hit language arts while browsing through a wide variety of science and social studies topics. The activities on the final pages and the online games are an entertaining way to introduce young children to a wide variety of skills such as graphing, main ideas and supporting details, opposites, and more. And all that was just in the first month.

Enjoy!

All About Reading - Level 2: Curriculum Review

All About Reading: Level 2 - A Homeschooling Parent's Review

Background

I am a certified Elementary and Early Childhood teacher and a certified Speech-Language Pathologist. I am homeschooling my kindergartener and preschooler. My son was always precocious where reading is concerned. He's reading independently at this point and I credit our experiences with All About Reading for much of that.

Even as a toddler, he was always interested in his letters. When we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to him as a toddler he was very interested in identifying all the letters at the beginning and end of the book. We fed that interest. He just loved to tune into letters and their sounds. So, a little over a year ago, when I began to think about homeschooling I decided to dip my toe into the water, so to speak, with a reading program. Michael loved letters. I loved reading. It seemed like a great place to start.

After researching many programs and trying the free sample materials for All About Reading Level 1, I decided that I wanted to go with the All About Reading curriculum. I wanted a phonics based program. Research supports a solid understanding of phonics as being essential to reading. I also knew I wanted a program that specifically addressed fluency. The fluency sheets in this program are well designed to practice single words, phrases, and sentences. The readers are exquisite and address phonics skills at the story level and reading comprehension at the same time. The flash cards teach sight words to mastery. The teacher's manual ties together all of these elements in an easy to teach way. I liked the design of the program. I liked it a lot. Also, they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee for a whole year. You have a full year to try the materials. If you are unhappy for any reason, just return the materials for a full refund.

When I received them, the materials were amazing. The program is comprehensive and full-featured. The active online forums were helpful more than once. The customer service was prompt and went above and beyond to be helpful (they sent me out a free replacement CD-ROM that I had lost). After completing Level 1 with Michael I purchased Level 2 for Michael and the Pre-Reading Level for Ava. That is how happy I am with the reading programs by the All About Learning Press.

Program Overview - All About Reading: Level 2

The program is multi-faceted. You get two lovely hardback readers. The black & white line drawing illustrations are beautiful and Michael found the stories to be genuinely entertaining. The words used in each story are matched to highlight the new phonics concepts recently taught and review phonics already mastered. You have a box of index cards that lets you review sight words and phonograms (the sounds that are associated with each letter or letter combination). There are magnetic letter tiles that help you build words and practice blending and breaking words apart. The teacher's manual is well written and easy to follow along with. You are walked through exactly what to do and when. Lessons move along at a pace that introduce new concepts while still reviewing the old ones so that concepts are consistently practiced until mastered. The lessons are accompanied by fluency pages for essential practice and fun games and activities that my children absolutely adore. They even include a progress chart to keep track of lesson progress with stickers and a certificate of achievement for the end of the level.

For the most part, the lessons follow an A B pattern. In the first lesson you teach a new phonics concept, play a game or activity to reinforce using that concept to decode words, and read fluency sheets that feature words that use the new phonics concept. Then you practice flash cards with words that use the concept. Those cards are then intermixed with the other flash cards that are not yet mastered for review at the beginning of the next lesson. In the second lesson of each pair, you begin with a pre-reading worksheet that previews key words and phrases that will be in the story. The lesson plan walks you through some brief pre-reading conversation designed to activate prior knowledge and then the child reads the story from the reader to you. There is some kind of post-reading discussion or activity to be done after the reading of the story. I often begin the second lesson in each pair by having Michael choose one story from the reader that he has already read to re-read before we move on to the new material.

Organizing the Materials and Using the Program

Michael and I are 10 lessons away from finishing All About Reading: Level 2. We have loved going through the program and are anxiously awaiting the release of Level 3. When I received the program materials there was a lot of preparation. I spent at least a couple of hours - maybe more - getting all the materials organized. All of the flashcards are printed on full sheets and have to be torn apart along the perforated lines and then placed behind the appropriate index card dividers in the index box. I took all of the activities and fluency pages out of the student book (again along perforated lines) and 3-hole punched them and put them in a binder. I did the same with the lesson plans. That way I have everything I need in one binder. I keep all of the materials together in a single bin on a nearby bookshelf. When it is time for Michael's reading we simply have to grab the bin and go. (Here's a peek in our bin.)

Once the initial preparation is done, very little planning time is needed after that. At the end of each lesson I let Michael have a few minutes of free time (no more than 5 minutes usually) while I preview the next lesson. I highlight the sections of the lesson plan I need to focus on. I cut out the parts of the activity for the next day. I make a few notes about how the day's lesson went and what I want to remember for next time. That way, everything is absolutely ready to go for the next day.

Time Commitment

Once the initial setup is done, planning does not require more than 5-10 minutes (at most) per lesson. If you're happy to cut a few things out during a lesson rather than before, preparation time is even less. The program is designed to be done with a teacher. It is not the type of curriculum where you can set a child up and then let them work independently while you do something else. You need 30-60 minutes at least 3-5 days a week to devote to this.

Download Free Samples

You can download generously sized free samples of key program components like the teacher's manual, student activity book, and the first and second hardback readers. It isn't quite try before you buy, because the included lessons are not consecutive, but it is enough to get a good feel for how the program works. The teacher's manual includes the table of contents, introduction, and lessons 1, 4, 5, 27, 38. The student activity book samples include some sample games and activities and some sample fluency pages. The sample from the first reader includes 3 entire stories out of the 12 stories in the reader. The sample from the second reader also includes three full stories of the eleven in the reader, including Pumpkin and the Kitten. We just read this one last week. Michael was fascinated by the story and Ava abandoned her independent play to come over and follow along while he read it. When Pumpkin is jealous of the new kitten and verbalizes a plan to get rid of the kitten Michael's voice got very quiet and his sister and I had to strain to hear him. He obviously found the story to be quite powerful. Both children were delighted when Pumpkin learned to give the kitten a chance at the end of the story. The storybook samples are definitely worth checking out!

Which of the products I actually bought.

Absolutely necessary: You definitely need the teacher's manual and one student packet for each student you will be teaching with the program. You'll definitely need the two readers as well.

Very nice to have: I very much enjoy having the reading review box and the index divider cards. You could just as easily buy an inexpensive index card box and make your own divider cards though.

Depends on the child: The letter tiles and magnets for the letter tiles are considered to be a main part of the program. If you have a child who is tactile and learns best with manipulatives you'll want these. I bought them, but rarely use them. Instead I use a small dry erase board and dry erase markers for the sections of the program that are designed for the magnet tiles. I find it quicker and more space efficient and Michael simply doesn't need to move tiles around to get the phonics concepts. In fact, when I do get them out he's distracted and I spend more time keeping him on task.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click on one of those links and make a purchase a portion of your purchase will go towards offsetting the costs of running this blog. I purchased all of the products I reviewed in this post on my own, long before I started using affiliate links and the opinions expressed are completely my own.

Interactive Word Wall - Creating and Daily Use of a Classroom Word Wall

In our schoolroom we have two 4' by 3' magnetic dry erase boards I got for a bargain at a local office supply store. I use one as our circle time center. The other I decided to turn into a word wall. Our homeschool focus this year (pre-K and kindergarten) is on math and literacy and a word wall fits in beautifully with that focus. I'm going to discuss the creation of the word wall, how I plan to introduce new words each week, and short activities I plan to do with the word wall on a daily basis.

Creation of the Word Wall

I took the same letters I used when making my phonics/handwriting alphabet border and used them to create the alphabet headings for the word wall. It puts a handwriting reference in yet another place in the classroom and brings that reference physically down to their level. Then I laminated them, cut them out, and slapped some magnets on the backs. I've found the most economical way to magnetize things for use on a magnetic dry erase board is to buy inexpensive magnetic vent covers (like these, except you can get them for around $5 at a local hardware store) and just cut squares to size out of the vent covers and attach them to your words (or calendars, or decorations) with double sided tape. I also wanted to separate out the digraphs so I made separate headers for those. Our reading program (All About Reading) treats them as separate phonograms, and we do a lot of speech therapy in this house, so it makes sense for us to separate those out.

I also made a starter set of words. I printed colored rectangles in 6 different colors because I've read that it is helpful for visual discrimination and sight word recognition to have each word under a heading placed on a different color background. (Hmm, in retrospect I could have saved a lot of color ink by just cutting the rectangle backgrounds out of six different colors of cardstock.) I printed the words on white paper. I then cut the words out taking the time to cut around the shapes of the words. I stuck them on the background with a tiny bit of double sided tape just to hold them in place as I ran them through the laminator. I made sure that all words that would end up under the same header (all the G words, for example) were attached to differently colored backgrounds.) Once they were laminated, I cut them out and attached magnets. I did not attach all of them to the word wall yet though.

Introduction of Word Wall Words

I am going to introduce no more than 4-6 new word wall words each week. We will learn and interact with the new words of the week during circle time. Each of the words for the week has a differently colored background. I also try to choose words that we can make into a sentence. During circle time we will look at each word and Clap and Snap the word. To clap and snap a word, say the word followed by a clap, spell the letters each followed by a snap, and then say the word again followed by a snap. So "and" would be: "and" (clap) a (snap) n (snap) d (snap) "and" (clap). Then we will build a sentence using a lap-size magnetic dry erase board. The entire process should take no more than 5 minutes each morning during circle time. At the end of the week the words will be moved over to the word wall and we'll begin a new set the following week.

Daily Word Wall Games and Activities

During each day we will play a short word wall game as a fun transition from one activity to another (probably in between writing journals and math). We will choose from the following list (these were chosen because they will work well in a small-group, homeschool environment but most would work in a classroom as well):

1. Find and Erase - Write 5-10 word wall words on lap-size dry erase boards with dry erase markers (you can use plastic plates or a piece of blank laminated paper for this purpose too). Say a word at random and have the children find that word on their board and erase it. Continue until all the words are gone. If your children are writing, they can write the words themselves. Otherwise, write the words for them.
2. Tall Towers - When you make your word wall cards, write a number between 1 and 3 in a corner on the back of each card. When you begin this activity choose 6-12 word wall cards at random from the board and use them as a mini card deck. Also grab blocks, snap cubes, legos, duplos, or anything other manipulative children can build towers with. Shuffle the cards. Have the children take turns pulling a card and reading the word on the front. If successful they turn the card over and add that many bricks (blocks, cubes, etc.) to their tower. If not, they return the card to the deck. Continue in this manner until all the cards are gone. Sit back and admire the "tall towers". Then have the children return the words to their proper places on the word wall.
3. Word Wall, Beach Ball - Stand or sit in a circle. Teacher holds a beach ball (or any ball, or bean bag...). The teacher tosses the ball to a child and asks the child to tell the color of the word "_____" (name a word off the wall at random). The child must find the word on the wall and name the color. Then the child throws the ball to another child and asks that child to tell the color of a new word. And so on...
4. Word Wall Hot Potato - Play hot potato with a bean bag or small ball. When the music stops, ask the child to tell you a _____ word (choose a color from the word wall). The child reads a word with that color background and then play continues.
5. Word Wall Bingo - Give each child a blank Bingo card with 6 spaces (laminated so they can reuse it) and a dry erase marker and have them write a word wall word in each space. When they are done, have them gather those words from the word wall. Shuffle the cards. As you read each word the child looks to see if they have that word on their card and if they do they can mark it out with their marker. The first child to mark out all their words wins. Then the children can return the cards to their proper spaces on the word wall.
6. Word Wall Tic Tac Toe - Make and laminate blank tic-tac-toe grids large enough for your kids to write word wall words in the spaces. At the beginning of the game have them write word wall words of their choice in each space. When they are done, have them gather those words from the word wall. Shuffle the cards. As you read each word tell them if it is an 0 or an X word. If they have the word they put an O or X over the word with their dry erase marker. The first person to get a tic-tac-toe wins. Then the children can return the cards to their proper spaces on the word wall.
7. Word Wall Order Up - Each child chooses 4-7 words from the word wall and returns to their desk. They put the words in alphabetical order. Once checked by the teacher, they return the words to their proper places on the wall.
8. Word Wall Mystery Word - Each child chooses 1-4 words from the word wall (depending on the total number of children you have and how many words you want in the guessing pool). Have them bring those words to you. These words will make up the guessing pool. Choose a word from the pool and give the students hints (The mystery word is one syllable, the mystery word has four letters, the mystery word rhymes with pan, the mystery words ends with an "e", the mystery word has two letters that are the same...). Take your time and let the children physically remove letters that do not meet the clue's criteria from the pool if necessary until only one remains. Then they've found the mystery word. At the end of the activity have the children return the cards to the wall.
9. Word Wall Rhymes - You say a word that rhymes with one or more words on the wall and the children find the words that rhyme.
10. Word Wall Fill in the Blank - Have the children choose 1-3 words from the word wall to form a guessing pool. Bring the words back to the table. You make up a sentence with one of the words from the guessing pool and say it out loud omitting the target word. The children must figure out which of the word wall words makes sense in your sentence. At the end of the activity have the children return the cards to the wall.
11. Word Wall Build a Sentence - Pre-choose several word wall words that can be combined in several ways to make grammatical sentences anywhere from 2-6 words in length. You say a sentence and the children work to build your sentence using the word wall cards. At the end of the activity have the children return the cards to the wall.
12. Word Wall Sorts - Have each child choose 5-10 words from the wall. You give them a criteria and have them sort their words by that criteria (words that rhyme, words that begin with the same letter, words that end with the same letter, words that have the same number of syllables, words that share a vowel, etc.). When finished, they return their words to the wall.
13. Guess which word is hiding? - Build a sentence out of word wall cards and then hide a key word with a sticky note. Invite the children to guess the missing word and write their guesses down. Then remove the sticky note and see if anyone guessed correctly. Repeat with a new sentence.
14. Build, Mix, Fix - For this activity you will need a set of letter tiles (or just letters printed on cardstock and cut out) for each child. The child sits at their desk with the letter tiles and you call out a word wall word. They build the letters with the tiles and you check for accuracy. Then they mix up the letters. Next they fix the mixed up letters. Repeat for a new word.
15. Word Wall Word Search - Create and print a simple blank word search form with a grid at the top and a blank box at the bottom. Have the children write 5 word wall words of their choice in the box at the bottom and then transfer them into the grid at the top. Next they fill in the remaining spaces with random letters. Then trade papers and do the word search.

I printed out this list to hang on the wall near my word wall so that it would be easy to remember a wide variety of activities and to choose a new one each day. This is three weeks worth of daily word wall activities without repeats. You're welcome to use the list as well. Simply click on the image to open to full size and then right click to save. Open the saved image on your computer and print.

Read More About Word Walls

I got most of my ideas from these two sources. They have even more word wall games and activities than the ones I chose to highlight above.

1. Kindergarten Lifestyle - Great explanation of interactive word walls, adorable free word wall printable, a few great game ideas.
2. Word Wall Activities - huge list of word wall games and activities. Dozens at least.

Homeschool and Teacher Resource: Classroom Alphabet Resource Kit

Alphabet Kit $6.95

• Instant PDF Download!
• Unlimited Printing. Print and use again and again.

Looking for coordinated alphabet decorations for your classroom?

• Want an alphabet border that also functions as a handwriting and phonics reference?
• Need the convenience of printing resources from your own computer?
• Looking for coordinated products such as desk strips, flashcards, and word wall headers?

Testy Homeschool & Teacher Resources:
Classroom Alphabet Resource Kit

This Classroom Alphabet Resource kit has been designed to provide coordinated classroom decorations and materials to be used in the teaching of the alphabet, phonics, and handwriting. The alphabet border uses Steck-Vaughn style printing which is similar to the Zaner-Bloser ball and stick, but slanted like D'Nealian (although less ornamental). The letters of the alphabet are printed in both uppercase and lowercase on each card on a 3-line rule. Each of the three lines are slightly different to aid in visual discrimination. The bottom half of the 3-line rule is highlighted also to aid in visual discrimination of the letter parts.

There are 1-4 pictures associated with each letter to aid in the teaching of phonics. Some of the letters in the English language are used to produce more than one sound. For example, the letter "C" can be read with an /k/ sound in "cat" or an /s/ sound in "circus". The pictures on the alphabet chart and the flashcards are chosen to reinforce these phonics details. There is an optional additional page for the alphabet border which features 6 common digraphs (ch, sh, th, ph, kn, wh). All together, the alphabet border is almost 13 feet long and consists of 14 color pages to be printed on any color printer. You can laminate the individual pages for durability before hanging them if you wish.

There are mini versions of all of the alphabet border cards to be used as either alphabet or phonics flashcards for drill or use in small groups, centers, or individual games. In this set each diagraph has its own card.

The resource kit also includes the 3-rule uppercase and lowercase letters on individual cards that can be used as headers for a word wall. I've included the digraphs here as well if you choose to separate out words that begin with digraphs into their own section (put "chick" under "ch" instead of under "c").

There is a handwriting mini-poster that illustrates how some lowercase letters are small (use only the bottom half of the 3-line rule), some are tall (use the entire 3-line rule) and some fall (fall below the 3-line rule). This can be a great visual aid when teaching formation of the lowercase letters.

Finally the set includes desk strips that can be attached to each child's desk or table or placed in a folder for their reference. There is a 3-line rule spot to write the child's name to be used as a spelling and handwriting reference. The entire uppercase and lowercase alphabet on the desk strip along with the six common digraphs, the numerals 1 through 9, and a tiny version of the mini-handwriting poster.

Printable Alphabet Resources Included:

• 13 foot, full color Alphabet border
• 32 letter and digraph flashcards
• Handwriting Mini-Poster
• 32 Word Wall Headers
• Desk Strips

This resource is intended to be purchased and used by a single educator in his or her classroom/s. Please do not share these materials with other educators. Refer them to my website instead. Thanks!

Alphabet Kit $6.95

• Instant PDF Download!
• Unlimited Printing. Print and use again and again.

Scholastic Book Clubs for Homeschool Too

I remember getting Scholastic Book club flyers as a child and poring over them for hours choosing exactly what to spend my allowance on. I remember turning in the paper form and the money to my teacher and I remember the joy of getting my little pile of books each month when they came in. It made me sad to think that my children wouldn't have that fun because our family is choosing to homeschool.

As it turns out, you can participate in Scholastic Book Clubs (now called Scholastic Reading Club) as a homeschool. You simply go to the Club Sign In Page and click on the "Don't have an account? Register now" button. Choose to register as an educator and then on the next popup page after entering your basic contact information you choose "Homeschool". You'll pick the grades you're teaching (you can choose more than one) and they'll send you paper flyers, but you can also do everything online.

Right now, if you make a $25 order, they'll send you a 10 pack of books with a teacher's guide for free (the book pack will correspond to the highest grade level you picked in your profile - if you want to receive a pack for a lower grade, simply temporarily remove the higher grades from your profile and add them back in later).

They have another amazing deal going on right now too. Teachers (including homeschool teachers) can purchase packs of 24 birthday coupons for $25. The coupons can be redeemed for books from any of the flyers for books up to a $5 value. So your $25 now can be redeemed for up to $120 in books during the rest of the school year.

I just made an order where I'll be getting 104 books for about 77 cents each (yes, I went a little crazy, but the deals are often best in the first flyer of the school year. The bonus points you are earning with the current order can actually be spent on the current order if you go into checkout and then back out again to make more changes. I used the points I earned on this order to "buy" additional books which is how I got the books down to 77 cents each. Well, that and I got a lot of multi-packs that were a good bargain.

I highly recommend the book clubs. It is difficult to find books elsewhere that match Scholastic's prices and they often have exclusive softcover versions of books that are only available in hardcover everywhere else. If you avoid the few ridiculously high prices items thrown into each flyer you can easily get 7-15 books a month for about $1-$1.50 each. You can also skip a month whenever you like.

If you happen to be in a homeschool organization one person can sign up as an educator and then distribute flyers to everyone else. The other parents can sign up for parent (rather than educator) accounts and use a code given to them by the coordinator to place their orders and pay for them online.

Enjoy!

Curriculum Review: All About Reading - Pre Reading

All About Reading: Pre-Reading - A Review

So you know where I'm coming from, let me give you a little bit of background about myself. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, a master's degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education, a second master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology, and was just shy of getting a doctorate in Communication Disorders with a focus on Reading when life took a detour into motherhood a little earlier than I had planned. Priorities shifted, and lots happened in between, but now I'm homeschooling my preschooler and kindergartner. Because I have such a strong background in education I really enjoyed searching for just the right reading curriculum for my little ones and when I found All About Reading I fell in love. I've been using their curriculum materials for over a year now and I have personally purchased and used the Pre-Reading program, Level 1 program and the Level 2 program with my children.

Program Overview - All About Reading: Pre-Reading Program

The program takes your child through the alphabet twice. First you do uppercase letter activities and then lowercase letter activities. You are working on letter recognition, letter sound correspondances, pre-reading skills (such as finding specific letters on a page, parsing print on a page into words, reading from left to right, etc.), and critical phonological awareness skills such as rhyme, syllable awareness, and isolating initial, final, and vowel sounds in words. All of these skills are critical pre-reading skills. I really wish the All About Learning Press would publish a stand alone phonological awareness program for children who are fine with the visual aspects of pre-reading, but seem to really struggle with the phonological awareness part of things. Speech-pathologists that work with young children would LOVE it. But I digress.

Each lesson teaches one letter. You show the letter, read one to three short stories or poems featuring that letter, do a simple craft-based activity page with that letter, and do a phonological awareness activity. The lessons are pretty short. If your child isn't craft oriented or you choose to omit the craft the lesson may only take 5-10 minutes. If your child really lingers over the craft it may take as much as 20 minutes. If you supplement the program (more on that later), you might spend 30 minutes on the lesson.

Organizing the Materials and Using the Program

I'm using the program with my four year old daughter. With my son I skipped the Pre-Reading Level and started with Level 1, but Ava has a history of a speech disorder called apraxia. Children with apraxia often have co-existing problems with phonological awareness and struggle with reading as they progress through school so I particularly wanted Ava to have a good grounding in phonological awareness skills. I specifically chose to start her with the pre-reading level because of the phonological awareness component. Also, Michael was starting homeschooling in earnest and Ava was feeling left out. She wasn't ready for Level One, but she was tired of watching her brother get to do reading every day without being able to do reading herself. And so we invested in the AAR: Pre-Reading Program.

We keep all of our materials for a specific lesson (Ava's reading, Michael's reading, Math, Handwriting, etc.) in a bin on a shelf in our schoolroom. Here's Ava's reading bin.

Inside I have a binder (where I put the teacher's manual pages, activity pages, and keep the progress chart), the two hardback books that come with the program, and the card box with dividers and phonological awareness cards). You'll also find our ziggy puppet in there.

The teacher's manual is well written. It tells you exactly what to do in each lesson and educates you, where necessary, about how to do things or why you need to do things in a certain way. Ava began the program very excited about the simple activity pages, but eventually we abandoned them because she lost interest. They are a simple coloring sheet for each uppercase and lowercase letter of the alphabet combined with a fun craft you can do with things you find around the house. (Crumple tinfoil to make stars and glue on, glue on construction paper to make water, etc.) The phonological awareness activities strongly lean on a character you introduce named Ziggy the Zebra. I underestimated Ziggy. I chose not to purchase the optional $18 hand puppet and then found myself making a sock puppet version of Ziggy because Ava LOVED Ziggy and using the hand puppet adds so much to the phonological awareness activity. He isn't used in every single lesson and Ava often begins the lesson by asking me if it will be a "Ziggy Day".

Almost all of the preparation is when you first receive the materials in the mail. It takes time to review the materials, separate all the perforated cards, and if you wish - transfer the teacher's manual and activity pages to a three-ring binder. After that, the program requires very little day to day preparation. If your child is doing the craft, you need to gather a few simple materials. Otherwise once you're into the program, you can pretty much sit down with your bin and go.

A Typical Lesson

1. Grab bin.
2. Introduce letter of the day.
3. Read selection(s) from hardback book.
4. Do phonological awareness activity.
5. Do craft (optional).

Download Free Samples

You can download free samples of the key program components (scroll down a bit). I recommend it. It gives you a good look at the teacher's manual, activity book, and the two hardback books that are integral to the program. (I love the hardback books in the AAR programs. I particularly like the poetry in Lizard Lou.)

Which of the products I actually bought.

I bought the basic package and added on the activity box and animal stickers. Essentially I skipped the reading tote bag and the ziggy puppet. In retrospect, since I ended up making my own ziggy sock puppet I think some kind of zebra is a nice addition to the program. Buy their puppet, make one from a sock, find an inexpensive stuffed zebra, or just print a picture of a zebra, but I do recommend some kind of zebra visual aid for the phonological processing activities. Want to see our Ziggy sock puppet? Promise not to laugh? Squint your eyes and use your imagination and maybe, just maybe, this looks like a zebra...

Great Supplemental Materials for the Pre-Reading Program

I found that Ava wanted to do a little more so I found some materials to supplement the AAR: Pre-Reading Program.

Usborne Farmyard Tales - Alphabet Book: This book is a perfect complement to the program. It has a sentence on each page with the targeted letter in red so it stands out. There are many items included in each picture that begin with the targeted letter. There is a little duck hiding in each picture and Ava loved to search for the duck. We would read the page in this book for the letter that matched the letter in the AAR lesson of the day. Unfortunately the book seems to be out of print, but there are many used copies available here.

ABC Sing-Along Flip Chart & CD: This product is amazing. There is a song for each letter of the alphabet - one per page. Each page has a full color illustration. The songs are sung to familiar tunes. The songs are really, really well done. Ava and Michael can sing every one from memory (up to V - that's as far as we've gotten). We often sing these in the car or while I'm fixing Ava's hair to pass time. We use dry erase marker to circle all the targeted letters in the poem as we sing the song on the first day. (You could also listen to them on the CD - the production value on the songs is really nice.) We actually sing through all the songs we know, looking at the page and reviewing the highlighted letters at the beginning of each lesson. The songs are short, so it only takes 5 minutes or so to do the entire set and Ava loves it!

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click on one of those links and make a purchase a portion of your purchase will go towards offsetting the costs of running this blog. I purchased all of the products I reviewed in this post on my own, long before I started using affiliate links and the opinions expressed are completely my own.

Homeschool Circle Time

Creating a Homeschool Circle Time Board (with links to free or inexpensive resources)

We begin our homeschooling day with circle time. To be honest, initially I planned a circle time just because it seemed "everyone does it". I thought it would be a light way to come together and transition from informal being at home to the structured schooling part of our day. I have completely upgraded my opinion of circle time. We cover a LOT of territory during circle time and I log the time as half math and half language arts. We spend 20-30 minutes in our circle.

Our circle time area is in a corner of our school room right next to a window. We sit on a small, soft, purple rug I grabbed at Wal-mart a while back. We got a 4'x3' magnetic dry erase board for a steal at a local office depot. I honestly think it was a price mistake, since it was over half off the price I'd seen for similar boards everywhere else, but they insisted it was priced correctly. My husband hung it and then I got started. I found the lovely borders and the slightly less lovely, but functional calendar at the Teacher Storehouse. Their shipping was super quick and everything was packaged well and arrived in great shape.

I wanted to be able to pin up several pages at once, so I found some great neodymium pushpin magnets on Amazon. They are tiny, yet powerful and so they work perfectly. They are also bright and cheerful and I couldn't be happier with them for this purpose. Of course, as with any powerful magnets, make sure they aren't around kids still putting things in their mouths.

Homeschool Circle Time Routine

Introduction ( <1 min )

We begin with a welcome song that I made up ages ago. If you promise not to laugh or snicker I will share the lyrics with you:

We are here together
for a day of work and play.
We smile and show respect
as we share our day today.
Let's try something new,
and grow a little stronger.
Let's stretch our mind,
and be kind,
here with family.

1. Calendar (approx. 5 minutes)

This calendar is a hybrid of a typical teacher's blank calendar that I bought and some numbers/holiday cards that I printed myself, laminated, and stuck magnets on the back. We do a lot during calendar time:

1. Sing the days of the week song. (Scroll down for lots of days of the week song choices and choose the one you like best.) When we sing our song, we're holding jingle sticks. The children must listen for the day of the week that is the current day, and they can only shake the jingle stick when we sing that day. This encourages active listening and practices self control.
2. Sing the months of the year song. Again, we hold the jingle sticks. This time each person shakes their stick when we sing the month of their birthday. We all shake our sticks on the current month. This continues to encourage active listening and self control, but also teaches them their birth month.
3. Next we put away our jingle sticks and update the calendar. We add in the new day and practice saying yesterday's date, today's date, and tomorrow's date. We briefly discuss any upcoming holidays or other special days.
4. On the first school day of each month we break down the old calendar and begin a new one changing the season card if necessary.

2. Weather Graph (approx. 3 minutes)

We fill in our weather graph. We've agreed that we're charting weather during circle time. We don't go back and change the chart's data if the weather changes later in the day. We look out the window and make a judgement about the weather. If it's sunny I fill in a rectangle in the sunny column with a yellow highlighter. If it's partly cloudy we go with blue highlighter. Cloudy is a grey colored pencil, rainy is purple highlighter, and thunderstorm gets black highlighter with a highlighter yellow bolt of lightening (my son's suggested embellishment). We jot down the temperature by looking at the outdoor thermometer and move on. At the end of the month, we do some extended work here filling in the mean, median, and mode temperature and writing a summary description of the weather for that month.

I've seen similar graphs everywhere. Teacher Storehouse had one. Confessions of a Homeschooler has a free printable one. I wanted to add in a little more math to mine, so I made one where there's a spot for putting in the temperature and we figure out the mean, median, and mode temperature at the end of the month. There's also a space at the top to add in an overall description of that month's weather. Here's a copy if you've been looking for a more complex version of the weather graph (I did leave out a windy column. I needed the space.)

3. Poem, Nursery Rhyme, Fingerplay, or Short Story (approx. 5-10 minutes)

Next we do a poem, nursery rhyme, short story, fingerplay, etc. I print a bunch of these at once double sided and pin up as many as will stick with my heavy duty magnets. That way, I can get through a week or more before I need to take the time to put up a new set. First I used the sight word poems from the ebook version of this Sight Word Poems Flip Chart. Right now it is $29.99, but I grabbed it in one of the Scholastic Teacher Express dollar sales for $1. Wait for the next sale and cross your fingers that it'll be offered again. It is pretty great. Ava was working on the sight words and Michael could read the poems. We'd go back through the ones we already know and eventually they had all of them memorized.

Once we finished all the poems in the flip chart (at a rate of one new one per school day, I went looking for something a little more complex. I found a great free children's anthology originally published in 1912. Click on the link and choose your format of choice (html, epub, kindle...). I printed a bunch of the fingerplays. I thought the children would enjoy them, it would let them practice the art of performance and connecting motions with words, and it would help their fine motor skills in their hands. They are loving the fingerplays. After the fingerplays, the book has familiar and unfamiliar nursery rhymes, short stories for young children, and more. And all for free! Once we work our way through the things I like best in that book I'm moving to a another book of poems I grabbed in a Scholastic Teacher Express sale.

4. Independent Early Reading Practice (approx. 3 minutes)

When I was looking for a new source of daily poems I stumbled across some free, printable, one page early reader stories on clarkness.com. A former special education teacher wrote an entire series of short, one-page early reader texts in gradually increasing difficulty. They're all available to download, print, and use for free. I grabbed the series and started mid-way through. Michael reads one to us each morning during circle time. Again, I print them double sided and pin a week's worth up to the board at a time so that each morning all I have to do is flip a page over to get to the new one. Ava likes listening to her brother read and he's proud to lead a little part of circle.

5. Song of the Day (approx. 5 minutes)

Next we sing our learning song of the day. I printed the songs from 50 Learning Songs Sung to Your Favorite Tunes two per page double sided. This is another resource I grabbed during a Teacher Express Dollar Sale. I pin up a week's worth or more, and we sing a new one each day.

6. Word of the Day (approx. 3 minutes)

Then we learn a word of the day. Another find from a Scholastic Teacher Express Dollar Sale was Daily Vocabulary Boosters. Half the words have illustrations and half do not. I printed the half that had illustrations and have been using them for our word of the day.

7. Telling Time (approx. 5 minutes)

Finally we do our time worksheet. We review some basic time facts. We fill in the current time on an analog clock and write the time. Then we practice three more times of the day. I laminated the worksheet using this inexpensive and tiny home laminator, and we fill it out each day with a dry erase marker. Again, I was inspired by the "What Time Is It?" printable from Confessions of a Homeschooler, but made an expanded version for myself. Here is the expanded version if you would like to use it:

And that is probably way more detail than you ever wanted to know about how we do circle time around here. I hope you find at least some of the resources useful and many of these resources would also be useful in a traditional school classroom, or a speech room as well.

It's the small things...

I'm beginning, bit by bit, to get the schoolroom decorated. As I mentioned, we're working on handwriting and after researching I chose the Steck-Vaughn style for our print style. I loved the free printable 5x7 alphabet flashcards available on the Confessions of a Homeschooler website that can be printed and used as an alphabet border on a classroom wall. I wanted my own version for several reasons. First, I wanted the handwriting font to match. Second, I wanted the pictures on the cards to represent all of the phonemes that are represented by each letter in English because that is how the letters are being taught in our reading program. (So, for example, "a" needed an axe, acorn, and avocado.) Finally, I wanted the letter rules to have a blue skyline, and a highlighted bottom section because my littles need a little help with visually discriminating the different portion of the rules in order to properly form their letters.

So, in my usual way, I made my own. I carefully designed them so that the pages don't need to be trimmed or anything, I just needed to place the edges of each sheet together and they would look evenly spaced. I was also lucky in that the wall I wanted them on was the perfect lenth for 14 landscape pieces of paper (26 letters on 13 sheets and 6 digraphs on an additional sheet of paper). I recruited my husband to help me hang them. Of course, then we discovered that the wall space was not an evenly spaced. There were curves where there shouldn't have been, and our entire house apparently leans downward to the west. Delightful. We fudged a straight line, used the double sided tape I had bought specifically for the purpose and set to hanging. It looked beautiful. We both stepped away and gazed up in satisfaction. Then we heard the distinctive sound of tape peeling away from the wall. The double sided tape wasn't sticking. My husband crawled back up on the chair and I handed him strips of regular tape while we essentially redid the entire job. However, one week later it is still hanging and I am delighted. They suit our purpose beautifully, they cheer up the room, and Michael has spontaneously referred to the border as a resource multiple times.

Take a look:

Creating Custom Handwriting / Writing Journals for Young Children

Ok. If you follow here regularly you might have noticed that I'm somewhat... detail oriented. (That sounds much better than "Type A Obsessive" right?) I knew that I wanted to include formal handwriting instruction and writing in our homeschooling curriculum. I searched online for something I could just print and use, but didn't find anything just right for our needs, so I designed something myself.

First, I found Educational Fontware. For $49.95 you get the licence to use 33 handwriting font families and some specialty and decorative fonts. You can print most of the fonts with dots, outlines, arrows, rules and so on. It was a great investment. I compared all the print fonts and chose the one I liked best for teaching the children. I made a chart so I could clearly see the differences between the different fonts.

I ended up choosing Steck Vaughn. That was simply the one I liked best for a variety of reasons. Then I dove in to actually creating the pages for our writing journal.

Each day the children complete a two-page spread. On the left is a handwriting practice page and on the right there is a writing journal page. I began with uppercase letters although if I were to do it again I would have chosen lowercase first. I wanted the handwriting page to include both tracing the letter and writing the letter. I wanted them to practice it alone and in a word. I also wanted to include a visual discrimination section. I also prompt them to go back and circle their best letter to encourage self-assessment. I include pictures of things that use all the sounds that the letter can make. Here are a few examples of our handwriting pages. Later I began having the children write the entire word in the "Practice in a word" section to facilitate review. The lower half of the rules is highlighted to help them discriminate between the part of the letter that goes in the top half of the rule and the part of the letter that goes in the bottom half of the rule.

For the writing journal pages on the right-hand side of their journals I wanted them to write their name and the date. Then there is a written prompt inside a box followed by blank handwriting rules. The rules are sized to match the handwriting practice on the opposite page. They are instructed to use at least three colors in their picture to encourage them to spend some time on their picture and to add a little complexity. After they finish their picture, Ava dictates a sentence to me. I write it in pencil on the bottom of her page and then she traces over it. If Michael's sentence is short, I write it on a dry erase board and he copies it into his journal himself. If his sentence is longer and I'm worried he won't be able to fit it all, I write it in the journal in pencil and he copies over it. In the second half of the writing journal I moved from two lines to four because the children constantly needed more space than they had for their thoughts. I also plan to have Michael move to using invented spelling and writing his thoughts himself rather than using a dictation method, but we haven't started that yet.

Here are some examples of our writing journal pages. I began with very simple prompts and moved to more imaginative, open-ended prompts later.

Here are a couple of writing journal pages complete. The name and dates have been cropped out to protect the anonymity of the author-artists.

Our first handwriting/writing journal consists of a handwriting sheet for each of the uppercase letters and a few practice sheets with words at the end and the facing writing journal pages. When we finish the first book, I will make another one with the lowercase letters and new writing prompts.

So far the children love writing journal time. They enjoy working in their journals and showing off their work to anyone who will sit down and look through the journal with them. We typically spend 30-45 minutes per session working on the lesson.

Later, I'd like to expand our writing curriculum to include a weekly "storywriting" activity where I sit down at the computer and take dictation of a story created by the children. Then I'll print it out and let them illustrate the story. It will allow them to experience writing longer stories than they can currently create in their journals without being held back by their current fine motor/handwriting slowness.

Homeschooling Year One - Kindergarten / Pre-Kindergarten: Daily Schedule and Routine

When I started to think about homeschooling, I wanted to know what a typical day was like and so I asked google. Doesn't everyone ask the collective wisdom of the internet for answers to their questions these days? I was frustrated that I couldn't seem to get a satisfactory answer. I think it is because every family that homeschools finds their own routine. Each family has a blend of unique personalities and ages. The number of children differs. The ages of those children differ. The discrepancy in ages differs. The style of homeschooling differs as does geography, physical space, family obligations, extracurricular activities, and so on. And, from day to day, week to week, and season to season, schedules morph and change as well.

"Fine, fine..." I grumbled to myself. I understood all that, but I still wanted to read some examples. And so, in our homeschooling infancy, this is how the rhythm of our days has been running.

My children wake up at the crack of dawn. I used to set my alarm for the dark and wake with them, but as they grew and became more independent I abandoned that. Now we set out a simple breakfasty snack for them to serve themselves and allow them their daily phone time in the wee hours of the morning. (They play on outdated iphones repurposed for their use and filled with mostly educational content.) I come downstairs sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 am at which point the children have been on their own for about an hour. 8:00 is my self-imposed hard limit.

I spend the next 30-45 minutes feeding the children a more nutritious second round of breakfast, fixing Ava's hair, drinking some tea, etc. Our homeschooling day begins at approximately 8:30 am.

Disclaimer: These times are approximate.

8:30-8:50 am: Circle Time. Welcome song, calendar work, weather graphing, and the song, word and poem of the day...

8:50-9:00 am: PE Break. We do something active to shake out the wiggles from sitting through circle and help get ready for the next chunk of sitting we'll be doing shortly. Lately we've been getting to know our bodies. We discussed all the major muscle groups of our legs and stretched each area followed by exercises that work those muscles. Then we did a similar group of activities for the arms. Next we'll move to the core. We talked about how muscles get stronger when you use them. Other times we'll explore movement types like running, skipping, jumping, leaping, galloping, etc. We might play a quick beanbag game or have an indoor race. I plan this activity in the PE Break section of the planner.

9:00-10:30 am: Writing journals followed by RightStart Math Level A lesson. I teach these to both children together expecting slightly more of Michael and slightly less of Ava due to the one year age difference.

10:30-11:00 am: Light healthy snack break accompanied by discussion of the nutrition components of our breakfast and snack. I'm pushing nutrition right now in the hope that it will help a little with the picky eating that runs rampant in our household. I'd say it is actually helping and so we will push on...

11:00 am-12:30 pm: Now the children alternate. First Ava does All About Reading: Pre-Reading with me while Michael chooses an activity box to play with on the nearby circle. He knows he needs to play independently and quietly while I work with Ava. He'll often sneak over and listen while we sing our letter of the day song and read the letter of the day poems from the reader simply because he enjoys those parts of her lesson. Then Ava plays quietly nearby while we do Michael's All About Spelling Level One lesson and All About Reading Level 2 lesson. He has chosen to do his spelling on the computer because his spelling skills far outstrip his ability to actually write the letters.

12:30-2:00 pm: Lunch/television/free time break.

2:00 - 4:30 pm: This time varies depending on the day. Some days we have a play date with friends. Other days we'll do another lesson (arts/crafts; science; social studies; music; etc). Sometimes they simply have free choice time and play.

That is our "typical" schedule. Of course, things vary. Monday mornings we have gymnastics at 9:30 and so we do that and then shift the rest of the schedule backwards once we get home. Wednesday mornings my amazing mother takes the children to Story Hour at the library and keeps them through lunch. Then we do some lessons when I pick them up after lunch. So although we have a routine for "home days", there is a lot of variation during the week.

But, that gives you an idea of how things are structured at the moment. I'm positive it will all continue to morph and change over time.