Reading

Recently, I got super frustrated by the slow progress we have making (partly because I didn't invest enough time with her) that I stepped up our phonics reading this week.

 

At first our phonics learning went very well. She could decode 'at' family words very well. Until she tried 'ug' words. She had a lot of trouble sounding out 'mug' and kept reading it as 'mat' or even 'pup'.

I still remember that despite explaining to her over and over again, she simply couldn't get it. What baffled me was that she could sound out 'bug' but not 'mug' and 'rug'.

I got so frustrated that I smashed our doodle board on the floor in anger. YES, ME! I get into a monster mad mom rage too. We all do right? Keeping it real here.

 

On hindsight, she couldn't sound out 'mug' and 'rug' possibly because she has never heard nor used these words before. We don't use these words, we always use 'cup' for 'mug' and 'mat' for 'rug'. Now I know why is it important to speak to the child as much as we can. Being familiar to words by hearing also helps the child to decode and read.

 

So anyway, after that mad rage I hid in my room to calm myself down. Some fairy must have sprinkled some magic dust during this time. Because when I got out, she miraculously could sound out the words. And not just the 'ug' words!

 

 

 

She went on and sounded out ALL the words on these cards that I printed  from 3 Dinosaurs blog. Who would have thought! Don't ask me what happen, I truly have no idea.

 

 

Since she was getting the hang of it, I got her a set of BOB books for her to give meaning to her new found skill- read in complete sentences. She's doing very well!

 

 

At the same time, she is learning new words from school (mostly sight words). Each time she brings home a reader, I would test her by extracting the words and get her to read them as stand alone. I am happy that she is truly recognising the words and not merely memorising the book.

 

 

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Together with her new found skill and the words she learnt in school, she is able to read simple books like 'Come back Ben'.

 

 

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I got so excited that I even picked up a Peter and Jane book. Never before! I never like Peter and Jane books but, I looked through the books and found that the methodology works well for Doll. She is about 2a/3a level. But I decided to start her with 2a first. I may or may not continue with this series, let' see!

 

 

I am SO glad we have made another step forward after dragging our feet for so long!

 

 

 

A little Garden for her

One of Doll's thematic learning at school was about garden.

She came home and bugged me to get her a garden. So I did.

 

 

 

Pretty?

 

Here's how I did it.

 

 

Materials needed:

 

daddy's old t-shirt (brown in color)

toilet rolls

 

basket

fake flowers 

(basket and flowers are from Daiso)

 

 

Cut out the shirt big enough to cover the toilet roll. Wrap securely the cut out shirt around the roll.

 

 

Cut out another piece of the t-shirt and lay it in the basket.

 

Stuff the wrapped toilet rolls neatly into the basket.

 

 

You may start your 'gardening'!

 

Stuff the flowers in between the rolls.

 

 

And viola!

 

Have fun!

The Sun, Pluto and heaven

photo credit

 

 

 

Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with Sonshine. He started by throwing me a question. He asked me what was the name of the robot (I was later told it was a spacecraft) that reached the dwarf planet, Pluto.

 

I had no clue! I shot that question to my husband over the watsapp and found out that it was called NASA The Horizon. Feeling very intellectual, I shared that information with Sonshine and even tried to challenge him by asking him if he knew how long it took for the spacecraft to reach Pluto. I had ' almost a decade' as the answer but he quickly shot back, '9 years'. I was stumped. I was sure my answer was correct because during our staycation at Shangri-La Hotel last weekend, we had a copy of National Geographic. It was then I read that the robot or spacecraft, took 'almost a decade' to reached Pluto. But my 8 year old boy's answer was even more specific than that!

 

Apparently, he read from that same copy of National Geographic that the craft left earth in 2006 and so, he did his own calculation. I was stumped because as I recall, he barely read the magazine nor was interested enough to look at it. As far as I remember, he merely flipped the pages for a few seconds. I even tried to interest him to read but he shrugged me off. I had the impression that he wasn't interested so I left it as it was.

 

How wrong was I.

I regretted not taking back that copy because he went on to ask me more questions.

 

'How fast was the robot travelling?'

'Would it be flying to the other dwarf planets?'

'What is the coldest DWARF planet in the WHOLE UNIVERSE?'

'How cold is Pluto?'

'Why can't that same robot go on to other planets? WHY? WHY?'

 

And the very knowledgeable me replied 'I don't know, I don't know, I don't know'.

But he wouldn't let me off and kept on with his questions until I convinced with some sort of answers.

 

And as I was trying to sift out the answers on google for him, I found out about another dwarf planet called Ceres. I offered that information to him thinking it was new to him only to be told that he 'already knows'. He could even tell me Ceres is positioned after Mars. I discovered he also knew all the 5 known dwarf planets to date, its names and even their locations. 

 

All of a sudden, I felt really stupid.

 

Our conversation led on to the Sun and that was when I shared that the scientist believed that there would be an explosion on the Sun and us earthlings would only have 12 hours to protect ourselves. He responded with a flurry questions, when, how, why etc. But what amused me was that he concluded that the scientist will eventually invent a shield to protect the earth. And that God will give the mortals some sort of ear muffs to protect their ears from the sound of the explosion. I told him but it won't happen until a billion years later and he said he was thinking for the future humans in a billion years, LOL!

 

We went on to talked about the universe, God and heaven. He said that he believes In heaven there is no time. I thought he learnt that from the children's church but he said no, he simply said 'I KNOW that'. And he is quite right.

 

He also asked me where is Heaven.

I told him it is beyond the universe.

 And that was when he suddenly said this

 

"I want to live in the same house as you" 

 

"But, you are living in the same house as me!" I retorted

 

He said "I mean when we are in heaven."

 

''Why?'' I asked.

 

''Because I love you''

 

And that concludes the day when my son made me feel really stupid but really, really loved. 

 

 

 

 

DIY hundred board

Ah yes, I already own one Montessori board but my itchy fingers just needed to make another one for Doll. I simply LOVE DIY stuff! I couldn't resist doing it after seeing these woods in Daiso. JUST-GOT-TO-MAKE-'EM!

 

If you desire to own a hundred board but don't want to splurge on one. Here's a cheap way to make your own. And easy too!

 

 

 

You can get these babies from Daiso. It comes with 18 (if my memory didn't fail me) of these in one pack for just $2! You need to get about 5 packs and that just cost you $10 in total!

 

 

You can either write directly on the wood or get those sticky labels. I did the latter. LOVE the effect. And oh, what happens when the child is done with these? You can convert them into free play, wood blocks! How's that? Play and learning incorporated in one, and it's affordable! Now do you know why I love DIY stuff?

'Wood' you read with me?

I am narrowing my learning with Doll to just reading and counting. I am slowly accepting that I have barely enough time nor energy to do anymore than that with her. Here's what I have been up to.

 

 

I absolutely love Daiso wooden blocks! This idea was birthed when I saw my good friend's post over at Playhood. I just had to make my own! I used these blocks to teach Doll phonics and reading. All I had to do was stick the labels on each block of wood and write down the letters.

 

This week we are learning the words within the 'ad' family.

 

First, I had her sound out the 'ad' word.

 

 

I took out the consonants and have her sound out the individual letters before combining it with the 'ad' blocks. We sound out the words together.

  

 

 Besides phonics, I am also teaching her to read by sight. While she is able to read simple sentences, but I want to speed it up.(I am surprise by some of the words she knows. Must have been picked up during our read aloud time together) So I purchased this series of readers from Popular book shop (even though I have tons at home already). I am using these books to work on her reading. I am pleased that she is able to read some books on her own. Now, we have to tackle the other books.

 

 

 

As usual, I always go for books with simple sentences with repetition.

 

 

I made labels for her to learn the new words. I must say she picked up the words pretty quickly. Must be her sensitive period now.

 

DIY continent map

When Sonshine was just 2 years old, he worked on the Montessori continent map. He loved it and it rocketed his interest for world maps, flags and the countries till this very day. (He's quite the expert now!) I cannot wait for Doll to work on it; she's not quite ready yet though. Before that happens, I decided to make a new continent map for her.

 

 

 

The version Sonshine worked on was made of paper wrapped in clear plastic (at that time I did not have a laminator). Blessed Doll, gets a prettier version!

 

 

Her map is purely made from felt which I painstakingly hand-stiched bit by bit. Sonshine, the professional, was watching me like a hawk, making sure I sewed the continents correctly. He was the one who quickly reminded me that I had left Tasmania out!

 

I am not that clever, I did not come up with the pattern (wish I did). The free pattern is from the good lady at Imagine our Life; you can get it here. The felt materials can be found in Daiso or even Popular bookstore.

 

I think I may have butchered her pattern. My scissors cutting skill is horrendous. Plus, I left out quite a bit of smaller islands because I was just too lazy to do it!

But to be honest, the sudden wavy curves every now and then makes it terribly tough to cut! And don't get me started on cutting the small islands! Glad that that's all over now!

 

 

I made two sets of it. One, as shown earlier, I stiched the continents onto the map. I cut out loose pieces of the continents but I deliberately did not attached them.

 

It is meant for the child to arrange the continent map as what Sonshine is doing in the above picture.

 

Viola!

 

So what else can we do with this map? Plenty!

 

Learn the continents of course! I printed the free 3-part cards also from the same blog page. Using the cards, the child can label them accordingly.

 

 

Match the cards by its shape (ok, and color).

 

And it starts to get more interesting.

 

 

We can sort the animals by the continent where they are commonly found.

 

 

Or sort famous world structures by the continent they are at. (I had Sonshine sort it out for fun & photo-taking, easy peasy for him!)

 

 

The minitures are Safari Toobs which I bought it from Mothercare.

 

We could even sort country flags on the map too! You can see how Sonshine did here.

 

 

I am so proud of my felt map and excited! Can't wait for Doll to get her hands on it!

In the meantime, I'll just take it out every now and then and admire it. :D

 

 

Writing with skill

I have been trying to brush up Sonshine's writing skills but I am ill-equipped to teach him. So I have been buying local assessments books in bid to build up his writing ability but alas none work. It's not structured enough for me and him; I need a clear, systematic, step by step methodology in order to teach him. After some online search, I settled on a curriculum, popular among the American homeschooling community. 

Presenting: Writing with skill by Susan Wise Bauer. 

 

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This is a preceding series after Writing with Ease . I have written about it before (er, I am too lazy to search for the post). 

Writing is a complex task requiring the young student to use multiple skills simultaneously. He needs to have an idea, translate the idea into words, put the words in writing. When writing he needs to note his grammar, spelling, vocabulary, punctuations and take care that he writes  neatly, all these at once. 

 

Typically, the child is thrown into the daunting task and is expected to juggle all these skills simultaneously. Susan Wise suggests to break down each skill so that the student can concentrate on sharpening one skill at a time.  For instance, to help the child translate a thought or story into words, Susan Wise recommends narration without any writing. The child reads a passage and summarises verbally what he just read without having to write it down. The instructor will pen it down for him as he narrates so that he can see his thoughts in writing (yet not be constrained by the rules of writing). Here the child need not worry about writing rules, coordinating his eyes-hands and thoughts at the same time. All he needs is to focus in finding words for his ideas. And so on.

 

There are many aspects of Writing with Skill. For now, I am only applying 3 steps, Dictation, Summary and Thesaurus. I tweak the methodology such that it's applicable to our local syllabus. For a start,   I chose to use our local composition guide books as the text rather than the recommended novels.

I found the dictation exercise very useful. As I read a particular sentence, Sonshine has to register the words in his memory first before writing them down. He will recite the sentences back to me before putting it down on paper. By memorizing and reciting, I find it forces him to learn how to construct proper sentences or describe a situation he would otherwise not know how to. Also, it helps him pick up new vocabulary.

His pronunciation needs improvement that's why I make Sonshine read aloud first. I would correct him as he reads along. 

After he reads the passage, he would start to write a summary in  3-5 sentences. Summary helps him to study how others write and organise their thoughts. It also forces him to learn to extract out the key ideas of the story and learn that the other information in the story are details that supports the key ideas. This way, hopefully he gets the idea how to write. 

Lastly, Thesaurus. I take out a sentence and underline key words. He has to look up the thesaurus and find another word to replace. It is not easy because the words listed in the thesaurus have different shade of meaning and not all have can be applied to the particular sentence. He has to decipher which words best fit into the sentence.

Although I found these steps very useful, some may find it too dry and boring. It really depends what kind of learners you have and what is your preference of teaching. These books are not available in the library for borrowing, I had to purchase them from Books depository and they are pretty expensive. I love the systematic approach and I have high hopes that it will benefit Sonshine, IF we keep this up consistently. I hope I can judging how tight our routine can be especially during school terms.