"I can read!" :0D

Today Boykin discovered he can read :0) He's actually been reading for a while now, bits of books, odd words, a page here and there, whole books for the library reading scheme and whole books in his Scooby Doo learning-to-read books. (He's read 5 and a half out of 12 so far). But today, all cosied up in his 'den' in his bedroom, he picked up a book and read it all by himself and to himself. 

No-one pointed at the words and there was no white strip of card held under the text to help him remember which word he was reading.
He was so chuffed and we were chuffed for him.

Reading is something I take for granted. I don't ever remember a time when I couldn't read and so I've always viewed reading as something that you learn to do rather than something that you are taught to do. Maybe it's because of this that I've never followed a reading scheme with either of my littlies. Instead, I have read lots to them, made alphabet books, sewn letters into cardboard, used lots of magnetic letters, felt letters, sandpaper letters, sticker letters, playdoh letters, alphabetti spaghetti letters...... (you get the idea) to help with phonics. I've read out words on signs, words in picture books (onomatopoeic words were their faves), words on the computer screen, film titles, food packaging, instructions in workbooks, etc. We've drawn pictures to help with letters that were difficult to grasp - huge chalk pavement pictures- and told little stories of how letters join together to make new sounds and them acted them out. We've watched Letterland and Jolly Phonics videos and DVDs and I've stood in crowded places making silly gestures with my hands and arms to help them remember the sound of the letters they're looking at.
And today, it's all been worth it when my youngest and last child announced "I can read!!" And just to make sure, he read the book all over again to his sister :0)

Things that have helped us on our learning to read journey

A library ticket :0)
Letter of the week
Alphabet worksheets 
Letterland stuff
Jolly Phonics
words and pictures worksheets
alphablocks online game
lots of alphabet activities
Alphabet notebook/lapbook
Alphabet lacing cards

Fishfingers and custard

Yes. It's true. That's what Boykin had for his tea. In true massive-Dr-Who-fan style, complete with bowtie and sonic screwdriver, he had to try it. His verdict, too much custard makes the fish fingers taste funny :/ This is my son who is the FUSSIEST of eaters ever!!! I think I really do need to write to the BBC.

'Dear BBC,
Please can Dr Who eat some sensible food in at least one episode, something with cheese sauce or gravy would be helpful. Or a nice stew and dumplings, just so that my son will eat something other than cucumber and baked beans please.'

Not that he eats them together of course. And they certainly can't be touching each other. Oh no. Can't have that. Maybe I should apply to be a scriptwriter...... or an advisor.....or a dinner lady.

Other than strange menus, we've getting on pretty well despite it being school holidays. I don't mean that we've been getting on pretty well with each other - cos we always mostly sometimes do anyway :0) I mean, we've been getting on pretty well with learning stuff :0) They've started doing their maths every morning whilst birdwatching :0) I finally managed to clear the table so they can use it to work at again and I put some fat balls on the birdfeeder instead of the fancy seed holders.* The fancy seed holders were useless at attracting birds. I don't think I ever saw one single bird eat from them. The fat balls on the other hand are great :0) Not great for concentrating on the 7 times table, but great for getting a wider variety of birds into our garden.
Out came the binoculars and bird books, followed by great debates as to the identity of some birds whose plumages (plumage?) look (looks?) different to the pictures in the books - are they baby birds, teenage birds or adult males or females?
This evening we saw some new birds we've not seen in our garden before. We think they are long-tailed tits but if anyone 
knows otherwise, please let me know :0)

Sorry it's not a better picture. I'd love a good zoom lens :0)






*The table faces the window and the bird feeder is directly outside the window. I have been thinking of moving the feeder due to the lack of interest shown by the birds, thinking that it was too close to the house for their liking, but will now leave it where it is having discovered that the birds round here have a limited palate (like my son) and like cheap fat balls and not fancy seeds.

Wet Day

Today has been a very watery day :0) We managed to get up and out of the house early enough to go swimming for a change. Woohoo!! We even did maths before we went (shock).
Then we got home and did a bit more work on their Harry Potter lapbook (this is a VERY long term project- we're only on chapter 3, and we started it last year sometime). The Girl added a pig minit book (from the pig lapbook at HSS) to our slowly growing collection and I helped Boykin make a paper overcoat to show all the things that Hagrid had in his pockets.
After lunch, we did some painting. We're using Artistic Pursuits Book 1. Today's work was inspired by the 1911 Marc Chagall painting, I and the Village. These are my children's imaginative interpretations of the village we live in :0)

Boykin's village-notice how the sweetshop towers above everything else

The Girl's village

They used 6B pencils, watercolour pencils and a paintbrush. My kids enjoy doing art so I knew this book would go down well. I like it though, not only because they are challenged to create a piece of art for themselves, but also because there are copies of famous artworks in each section that they have to look at and engage with as well as explanations of how artists work.
They needed a rest after all this hard work so they watched Pocohontas II before Beavers and Brownies while I made tea. Me and The Girl had a lovely time in between dropping Boykin off at Beavers and her having to go to Brownies. We went on a wet, muddy puddle hunt in our wellies :0D So glad it's been chucking it down all day - there was no-one about to see us tap-dancing in puddles and squishing in mud. Loadsafun :0)

Busy Day

Phew! I'm quite glad it's over and am definitely looking forward to my bed. Yawn!
I got up to find Boykin watching Scooby Doo and The Girl reading her latest library book.
After breakfast, Boykin did maths

MEP Yr1b Ln 97, pt 2

It was a very enjoyable lesson, lots of mess and wetness and interesting questions about why water can bulge higher than the top of the cup (surface tension) and how many fingers can you stick in an extremely full pan before it spills over the side (displacement).
I had to put my car in the garage today so we had to leave some of the workbook section of the lesson until tomorrow. This meant that they had to change out of pyjamas before lunchtime (shock!) and lead onto a massive upset because his only white shrt is dirty and Doctor Who only wears white shirts. (I wonder if the BBC would extend their Dr Who wardrobe if I asked them nicely - maybe a pair of shorts or a t-shirt occasionally might help, lol). Anyway, after threatening reasoning with him, he finally left the house and enjoyed the walk back from the garage in the sunshine. All this time, The Girl was walking around singing along to her i-pod. A bit of deja vu for me, I remember my eldest doing the same thing with his walkman for years. How many times did I find I'd been talking to myself for ages? Ho hum!
We had some unexpected visitors just before lunch which was lovely. Good friends we've not seen for a while - 3 little boys, complete with small baby which kept The Girl happily entertained while me and their Mum had a cuppa and a catch-up in the kitchen :0)
Then it was time to pack a quick picnic and make our way to a Home Ed group visit to go on a boat trip into a canal tunnel. (Sorry, no photos, I forgot to take my camera :0( ) The kids got a good chance to play in the playground afterwards and burn off some energy. Not that mine had much to spare. It's the end of the school term next week and so the choir they're in had it's end of year concert tonight and The Girl's drama group had it's end of year play. We were so late home, they both tumbled straight into bed after supper with no story or anything. Bless them!

Miss Rumphius

Before we rowed Make Way For Ducklings, we rowed Miss Rumphius, so technically, this post should come before the last one. (rolls eyes) (Does anyone know how to put emoticons in posts, by the way?)
Just for a change, and because it seemed like there were more opprtunities for practical hands-on activities with this book, I decided not to do lapbooks with the kids just to see how it went. It went fine :0)
We stuck it all on the wall instead :0)

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney is the story of a woman who was inspired by her grandfather to not only fulfill her childhood ambitions, but also to do something to make the world more beautiful. This she does by scattering lupin seeds all around her town which flower and spread creating a colourful and beautiful display.

We learned about habitats and made jungle collages and reread our Tiger notebook, looked at animals in Australia and saw kangaroos at Chester Zoo; plotted her journey on a blank world map; learned about bushels and did some measuring and long multiplication to find how many packets of seeds were in 5 bushels (245,760); revisited seeds and grew cress; had a go at painting lupins and plantpots; planted lupins - seeds, tubers and plants and had interesting discussions on family traditions and how to make the world more beautiful ourselves.

The Girl's collage

boykin's collage

A bushel of Boy

Plantpot painting

Kangaroo at the zoo

Measuring

We had a lot of fun but were disppointed that our lupin seeds didn't come up, neither did the tubers and the flower of the beautiful blue lupin that I planted got eaten very quickly, presumably by slugs :0( I guess that the climate in my Yorkshire garden is not as good for growing lupins as the climate in Miss Rumphius' seaside town. Ho hum!

Books we used:

Make way for Ducklings

We did the FIAR stuff for Make Way for Ducklings over the last couple of weeks. It seemed fitting for the time of year (there are ducklings in our village) and I was especially chuffed when we went to Peasholm Park in Scarborough and discovered they have their own version of swan boats :0)

It's a very lovely story about Mr and Mrs Mallard looking for the safest place to lay their eggs. When the ducklings arrive, Mrs Mallard leads them through the streets of Boston to set up home in the Public Gardens. These places really exist, as do the swan boats featured in the story.
This meant that we could do some map work with real maps, and look up the Gardens and the duckling sculpture online.
We actually tried rowing this book a couple of years ago albeit unsuccessfully. Boykin was a bit young and The Girl just wasn't keen.
As well as their lapbooks, they had a lovely time making ducklings

 











The cross-stitch pattern doubled for the hama beads too.







We made the lapbooks by putting 2 folders together to make a 4 page book. These tend to be easier to look at afterwards as you need less space to open them out. See video (not ours)

Here is Boykin's lapbook

 He drew the duck himself and chose his own fonts for the title - capitals are 'Dalek' font ;0)

No idea where the dot-to-dot came from. I suspect it was once given as a freebie in a Dover newsletter. Most of the printables can be found on Homeschoolshare. If I can remember where the rest come from, I'll link to them :0)

The USA world book has a US flag mini inside it.
And the Massachussets mini book is a composite of a free unit from School Express and a where is Massachussets notebooking page (not shown because it's inside) from HSS.

The dot-to-dot is to practice alphabetical order just as the ducklings names appear alphabetically. (Another Dover freebie?)
He did a rhyming words worksheet and we played 'Rhyme Out' and made up silly rhymes to go along with the FIAR leson.

This is his drawing of the tower he built which goes with one of the art lessons in the FIAR manual. An exercise in drawing what you see.








The Girl's lapbook

She mostly used the same printables as her brother but did different things with them. She also had one or two extras :0) Again, most are from HSS.

She made more use of the free School Express Massachusetts unit.

 The dot-to-dot here came from Waterford Press. You have to register - it's free - and then you get access to lotsof different animal related educational printables.

This is the last section of her lapbook with photos and a google map of Boston as well as her drawing activity.

Another lesson they enjoyed was the maths. The manual suggests using cutout ducks but we found all the rubber ducks in our house and used raisins to do multiplication :0)







They've enjoyed this book and the work they've done to go with it. We even tried feeding our local ducks peanuts but they were having none of it. They only like bread :0)


Books we've used

Thoughts on Five in a Row

Susanna left a comment asking me what I thought of Five In A Row and when I tried to reply it seemed far too long for a comment so I thought I'd stick it in a post instead :0)
I bought volume 2 a couple or so years ago, and also now own volume 3. So far, we have only done books from Vol 2. We have meandered our way through the titles as they have become relevant, ie because of the season, or just when I thought Boykin would be interested. We don't use it continuously, but we use it regularly enough for it to be an important and integral part of our Home Ed adventure.
When I first started with it, I used it for both my children, then for a while The Girl decided she wanted to do Beyond FIAR for a change, which is similar but different as it deals with chapter books and involves more writing. She is now back doing FIAR with Boykin and really enjoying it again (more talking, less writing, more pictures.)
Her involvement adds a new dimension as she enjoys reading the story to him sometimes, or will want to act the whole thing out after a few days with the book :0) The discussions are also more in depth and more lively.
I've found some really interesting ideas in the lesson plans, which are clearly and simply presented and need very little preparation - bonus. The lessons for each book are divided into 5 groups, theoretically one for each day. We often take longer than this because we have other commitments, but still only do one group of lessons each day that we read the story. A lot of the lessons are discussion based, and they suggest keeping a notebook. My children, however, prefer to make lapbooks for each story instead. It's all very easily adapted according to your child's preferences/needs/abilities/moods.
I have found that Boykin is very proud of the work he has done for these stories and both children have easily retained much of the information that they were presented with. When we're out and about they often come across something that reminds them of one of the books and they'll spontaneously start talking about some of the things they learnt, sometimes months after we've read the book. It's obvious from their conversations that the stories have made a lasting impression and seem to be fondly remembered. I can usually tie-in what we've read to some kind of outing as well, which is always fun and just adds to the memory-making :0) Sometimes this is deliberate but also often happens coincidentally.
The books are worth reading anyway. A lot are set in America, but in Vol 2, we have done quite a few with European settings too. They also cover different historical periods and some of them cover quite deep topics such as slavery and prejudice. I'm very glad we've used FIAR as we've read books that I would probably never have heard of otherwise. Neither of my children complain when I say we're doing a FIAR book - which says a lot :0)
We're nearly at the end of Vol 2 now - or at least, we've nearly read all the books that are still in print and within my price range. I really would love to do The Giraffe that Walked to Paris with them but I don't think I'll ever be able to afford it :0( Having said that, I'm looking forward to moving on to Vol 3. and eventually Vol 4 :0)
In the UK, you can buy the manuals and a lot of the picturebooks from Conquest Books who have a superfast delivery service as well as a very friendly and helpful customer service. Highly recommended :0)
Here is some of what we've done so far. More to come soon :0)
Hope that helps, Susanna :0D

P.S By way of a disclaimer, I have to say that none of the companies mentioned have given me anything at all for saying such lovely things about them and I am in no way related or connected to anyone who is in anyway related or connected to the people who run these companies. All opinions are my own. Honest  :0)