Homeschooling with the Usborne Very First Reading Set

I can't believe it has been six months since I first bought the Usborne Very First Reading Boxed Set. We bought our set used on eBay because the new price of $70 seemed a little steep for a product I was buying sight unseen. To be honest, now that we've had the set for six months, I can honestly say the price is fair. The books are well conceived, designed, and made. They are a lot of fun to read with your child. There are three built in activities at the end of each book. There are also useful supplementary materials available to download for free online. These books make teaching my child to read fun for both of us. That is a lot of value in one boxed set.

We had gone through 10 of the 15 books. At book 8, the format changes from the adult and child taking turns reading pages to the child reading the entire text. Also, the books build in difficulty as you progress through the series. Michael was beginning to struggle and was having less fun. Here are some sample pages showing the difference in difficulty between the Level 1 book and the Level 10 book:

Then one day when I went to download some supplementary materials for the next book I saw that there were some new titles available in the series. They had released a second book for levels 1-7. Perfect! That was just what I needed to work with Michael. We could start over again at level 1 and work our way back up to level 7 with new books. I was very excited.

Then I realized that the new titles were only available in the UK. I searched and searched and finally found a way to order them (alibris.com). I was willing to pay new prices and shipping for these. That is how much I like them. The new books are just as nice as the original ones and they include little built-in ribbon bookmarks. Here is a picture of the inside of the back binding from one of the originals and one of the new books so you can see the change in selection.

We read both books at a level at the same time. So when I got the new books we started with Level 1 again and read Pirate Pat and Double Trouble in the same lesson. On the first lesson we read the books and do the first activity at the end of the book. Then Michael gets to put a sticker in the Activity 1 box on his progress chart. We also go through the sight word flashcards (download for free from usborne site) sorting them into the pile he knows and the pile he needs to work on. The second lesson consists of re-reading the books, doing activity #2, and working on the sight words again. The third lesson we read the books a third time, complete activity number 3 in the backs of the books and re-do the sight word cards. The fourth lesson is re-reading the books a final time, completing the downloadable worksheets and doing the sight word cards for the last time. Re-reading books is important for gaining confidence, intonation, speed, fluency, and comprehension. After the fourth lesson, we are ready to move on to the next level.

We are having the best time with this reading program and I'm looking forward to using it a second time with Ava when she's ready.

Winter is Kicking our A-- and It's Not Even Here

Spring and Summer are wonderful seasons during which our household is healthy the vast majority of the time. It is long enough that I actually somehow manage to forget the series of unending illnesses we fight during the fall and winter. I was taken by surprise last month when first Michael, and then Ava came down with walking pneumonia. It was September and still warm.

I ended up sick enough that I required antibiotics and a heart echo to make sure the cardiac symptoms I was experiencing were related to the cold/virus/sinus infection I was having trouble fighting off and not something more serious. (Heart echo was fine.) I was hoping all of that was a fluke. We had paid our early fall dues and were going to be fine at least until winter actually hits.

Then, in the middle of the week Ava woke up at 4:30 in the morning with clear symptoms of a stomach bug. She had to pick Wednesday. It's my favorite day of the week because my mom picks up the children from school and spends a few hours with them giving me an extraordinary uninterrupted 5 hours of time that I usually use to work on the next speech kit (/k/ is currently about 75% done and on target for a November 1st release date - possibly a smidge sooner.) Given that last winter my mom ended up hospitalized for several days after catching a stomach bug from the children I could hardly blame her for opting out of all contact with the children for a few days.

Enough! I officially declare that this is the last illness that will walk through our door prematurely. (For all the good that official declaration will do me - it just makes me feel slightly better to bluster.)

The Weekly Review: Week 82

SLP Resource of the Week

I saw another activity that would be great for working on sounds in isolation and as a bonus, practices letter recognition as well at the Tons of Fun blog. On her printables page you can download letter paths which are simply a grid of letters where the target letter works its way from a starting point to an ending point like a maze. You give the child a bingo marker, stamp, or stickers and they practice the target sound each time they take a step along the "path".

Ava this Week

Ava knows things I don't even know that she knows. She and her brother like to play together and so if he is playing a game she wants to play too. I have educational games installed on our phones and computers and Michael is playing them regularly. Ava is jumping right in and doing a pretty great job of keeping up. She's doing basic addition problems and learning her letter-sound correspondences. If she's not quite ready to go to bed at night I'll find her in the morning surrounded by books in her bed. There's nothing quite like the sight of your child sleeping in bed surrounded by books. It melts a mama/slp/educator's heart.

Weekly Michael

I grabbed a little map skills workbook from Scholastic when it was on sale for $4.99 to add a little variety to our homeschooling. Michael's eyes lit up when he saw it. It was a bright colorful book of his own that he was going to get to write in! The very first activity was looking at a map of Buddy Bear's bedroom and answering some questions about it and then drawing a map of his own bedroom. He did a great job and even wanted me to label all the things he drew just like the items on the other map were labeled. I was pleased with our first activity in map skills and he was excited and I thought that was the end of it.

Later that day, after I finished putting Ava down for nap, I went in to check on Michael in his room. He explained, "I just moved you from Ava's room to my room." I brilliantly responded, "Huh?" Then he showed me the "map" he had made of our house with various small toys representing people and pets in various rooms. When he heard me opening his door, he took the small toy representing me and moved it from the space on his map that was Ava's room to the space on his map that was his room. That boy never fails to amaze me.

Weekly Weight Loss

And one week later I'm down another 2.8 pounds. That's much better than the two-week stall that preceded this week. At this point I'm down 20-25 in the four months or so we've been dieting. I'm hoping to go another 10 before switching from weight-loss mode to figuring out a reasonable maintenance plan.

Weekly Speech Resource Kit Update

The /k/ kit is well under way. The initial section is complete and has a vowel worksheet, 44 illustrated one-syllable therapy cards, 18 sets of minimal pairs, three pivot phrase worksheets, 3 homework sheets, two story booklets, and a speech-switcheroo game to print out and use.

The final section is complete and has a vowel worksheet, 59 illustrated one-syllable therapy cards, 18 sets of minimal pairs, 3 pivot phrase worksheets, 3 homework sheets, 2 story booklets, and a speech caterpillar printable activity.

The medial /k/ section is also finished and has 44 illustrated two-syllable therapy cards, 9 minimal pairs, 3 pivot phrase worksheets, 3 homework sheets, 2 story booklets, and a Speech Match printable activity.

The mixed section, introduction, and appendix are still in progress.

Weekly Communication Fail

I had a customer contact me for help downloading the speech kits she had purchased. (Thank you again, to everyone who is buying the speech kits.) One thing I did to assist her is resend the email with the download link. When I emailed her to let her know she should look for it I said, "I resent that email..."

Somehow, not once in my life, did it occur to me that resent (I sent that again) and resent (take offense) are spelled in exactly the same way. She thought that I was telling her I was offended that she had emailed me with a question. I felt terrible! Nothing could be further from the truth. I immediately sent her a very apologetic email trying to clear up the completely unintended confusion. I hope she received my apology. I was actually quite happy to help. And so, from now on I will always hyphenate. "I re-sent that email." Hmm. Perhaps I'll just rephrase that entirely so there is no chance of ambiguity at all.