Language Arts This Week

The last word in that rhyme is ‘potatoes’.

Our phonogram for this week is -oe. I tried to use more than one phonogram but none of the others were helpful in coming up with a rhyme so I just went with the one. This week we are also working on the capitalization of first names and surnames. Martina’s copy work will come from the story Rip Van Winkle which she is reading independently as her Difficult Reading Assignment for this week. She reads the story in small chunks and I understand that it isn’t enthralling because it is difficult going for her at her reading level but it stretches her reading muscles and that’s the plan.

We are also enjoying the fable of Peter and the Wolf this week.

Today I told her the story of the boy who cried wolf. We then got out our crayons–she has commandeered the Lyras so I have to use the Stockmars–and she followed along as I crayoned a picture of Peter and the Wolf. The picture is her crayon drawing. Tomorrow I will retell the story and then she can write about it for her MLB. Peter’s name will be Peter Shepherd in order to practice capitalization of first and last names

Resources for this week: Barbara Dewey’s ‘Science as Phenomena’; The Writing Road to Reading‘s phonogram cards; and The Natural Speller, which I use for finding words with our weekly phonograms for use in my rhymes.

 

Summer is Almost Upon Us

Summer is looming and it’s difficult to look ahead without wondering if I’m right to keep schooling through the time of year when lightning bug jars, mulberries and swimming in the pool are some of my fondest childhood memories. With the breaks we take, both planned and because life gets messy and I drop the ball, we have to keep going. It’s less about choice than it is about responsibility.

We have been in homeschooling limbo for a month or so. My step daughter moved in and the sheer volume of extra stuff was overwhelming. Her overflow took over our school area briefly. But now the stuff is sorted, my allergies and the-cold-that-wouldn’t-end are abating and the social schedule doesn’t have anything stressful on it. We’re back to center.

Today we did our school work, (which means Latin light, math and reading, when we’re taking a break from homeschooling) then I did some planning while Martina played outside.

Beginning next week we are adding Singapore math back into our math program so that we can finish the grade level curriculum; we are also continuing with the Christopherus program which is beautiful and has helped us solidify some concepts. I have seen the holes in my daughter’s math knowledge thanks to the Christopherus math curriculum and am committed to sewing those up ASAP. We’re hitting the maths hard for the next couple of months. We will continue with Johnny Tremain and A History of US; resume our Old Testament Bible block for a 2nd go round; pick back up with phonograms and grammar in an integrated unit that I will share more on in the following weeks.

Outside classes are winding down for the summer so we’ll have more time at home and to focus on some Latin catch-up and hard-core math work.

What do you do during the summer? Do you lighten the load? Stop schoolwork completely? Keep drilling away? Please, leave a comment and let me know what works for your family.

 

Weekly Phonics Lesson

Each week I’ve been using 3 phonogram cards from the Writing Road to Reading as the basis for a phonics lesson for my daughter. I take those 3 blends, this week they were: or; wh; oa, and use words with those blends to make up a poem or little story. Sometimes they are embarrassingly bad but Martina doesn’t notice. She loves the pretty picture and the slow way we move through our daily lessons.

If there is room, I write the poem on the chalk board, if not, I draw the picture with chalk and write on a white board (a paint board really). I underline the blends we are studying in the poem.

Each day, for the first 3, we review a sound. On the 3rd day we go over all of them and read the story. On day 5, she copies the picture and story into her MLB.

We are going to leave this block for a while at the end of this week. When we start up again I will incorporate grammar lessons into this as well as the phonograms.

 

Weekly phonics lesson

We are using the cards from The Writing Road to Reading as a guide. We’re going through them in order and use 3 cards per week. I write a little poem or story paragraph using words with as many of the sounds as I can possibly incorporate.

This week our sounds are: ck, ar and ed. Here’s the poem/story:

Far back of the garden beneath a black night sky a girl in a tie dyed frock sat and watched the stars.

Of course, I drew a picture of this on our chalk board. I’m always surprised when my drawings come out looking even remotely like what I am trying for. We have a 4 day week for phonics. Days 1, 2, and 3 we read the poem and go over 1 card. Martina picks the words out of the story which have that letter blend and we talk about what sound/s that blend makes. Day 4 she copies the drawing and poem into her MLB.