Unfortunately, Common Core played me a trick. Social Science and Science are both integrated in the Language Art curriculum in our district. This means that if I take her out of Social Science and Science, I am effectively taking her out of Language Arts or in other words, I am effectively taking her out of school. Since I do not want to do this, the teacher and I agreed that in school Ballet girl will receive instruction during two periods, whatever the covered subject matter is: from 8:45am to 12:15pm when she is supposed to be instructed in reading mostly, and from 1:35pm to 2:15pm when she is supposed to have either PE or Music. With the first break we skip math. With the second break, from 2:15pm to 3:25pm, we skip writing and spelling. Thus, all of a sudden I found myself responsible for writing and spelling. Writing is a breeze. Spelling, on the other hand!!!! Oh my, horror!
I only know the way I learned to spell-word by word with tons of intuition, lots of reading, lots of writing and lots of copying. I was older than Ballet Girl when I started learning English and English was a foreign language and I was not seeing the learning as urgent. With Ballet Girl the situation is upside down. English is the language she does need to be well versed in. Teaching her, I felt, is a huge responsibility, which I had not researched. What to do? I turned to the few homeschooling blogs that I follow and from all I extracted fabulous reviews for a program called All About Spelling and All About Reading. The explanations and the website did not make it very clear to me what the content of the program itself is, but the promotional videos that I watched did make a few points regarding spelling that intuitively I agreed with. So, under pressure, I purchased Level 1 and Level 2 of the spelling program and Level 2 of the reading program. As I said, the website did not do a good job in describing the included materials, so I assumed that as with math, the student book and the interactive package would suffice. Wrong! The program requires the teacher's manual. I would not follow it because it is scripted and this is contrary to my style. I will need to read it and execute the recommended exercises on my terms. What was disappointing to me is that from the activity book I could not deduce the exercises/assignments that needed to be carried out. Not only that but the two readers, not included in the student package, were essential. So, I was disappointed that I had to shed more money to get the teacher's manuals. Thankfully I found them through the Rainbow Resource Center which did not charge me shipping as would have done the All About Learning site. I decided that I should obtain the teacher's manuals but I will not purchase any of the other levels unless I find them for very cheap on eBay.
I looked over the student package for all three packages that I had ordered and they appear very simple. Reading and Spelling are being taught through some games. With my kids I have found that while games are fun, they are not needed-give them the principle and let them use it is sufficient. If your child learns more through play, this program may be successful for you. I don't think we needed it but I will go ahead and test drive it and update this review later.
Update 9/2/2014: Well, I am the owner now of the complete AAS-Level 1, AAS-Level 2 and AAR-Level 2 sets. I read through the first few steps in AAS-L1 and AAR-L2 and I think that this program is how I would have wanted a reading/writing program to be structured. The build up is gradual with lots of review until mastery is demonstrated, without a trace of doubt. The steps are ordered into a very logical sequence which pleased me.
I think that the hands-on activities are a bit excessive, but I do see the point-children do learn through physical interaction with their environment.
To begin AAS-Level 1, I think one needs to be somewhat of a reader. Ballet girl is an almost fluent reader, reading at around beginning second grade level. To reach this level we have encountered a lot of books with various word patterns in them and I have pointed them out along with examples that follow the same patterns. So, she is aware for instance how the following patterns 'oo','igh','ight','silent E', 'ck','ould' are pronounced. She also understand that there are some exceptions-door, some, etc. In pre-K and K she also practiced the sounds of the individual letters. I think that this reading/discussion practice has laid a nice foundation to begin systematic study of the rules of the English writing.
In school, she had one-syllable, 3/4-letter words with silent A to practice. At home I wanted to review the principles and establish a routine which she can follow to systematically deduce the spelling of the word she hears.
Step 1: We count the syllables (the bigger parts of the words): we put out fist under the chin, pronounce the word and monitor how many times the lower jaw moves.
Step 2: Each syllable we break into its sounds. We count the sounds and write that many space on the white board.
Step 3: For each sound we try to see which letters or letter-combinations can produce that sound.
For example, the word CAN. The first sound can be produced by C,K,CK. The CK lives mainly at the end of words. C and K both work, so we keep the C (the C wins).
For example, the word KIT. The first sound can be produced by C,K,CK. We rule out CK as before. C, followed by I is typically pronounced [S]. This leaves us with K.
SIT is an interesting example. The first sound can be produced by S and C and both work. This is where reading experience helps. THE FAT CAT SAT ON THE MAT is a famous first book. So, the past tense of SIT is SAT. If we wrote the word as CIT, the then past tense will be CAT which is pronounced [KAT] because C followed by A makes the [K] sound. So, some detective word is involved and it is fun. This particular example is useful to show that there will be times when it is very useful to put the word in a sentence and try different tenses. This seams like a lot but if the child has some reading experience under his belt, I think that this logic is not a stretch.
Now, the most stunning thing is that after having played detectives, we will be going back to basics to make sure Ballet Girl has mastered the basic letter-sound correspondences so that in the future with practice such detective work will be a breeze/fun/entertaining for her.
Update 11/9/2015: I do not like the organization of the series. I do like the content of the series, I object o the sequence. For example, when studying the J-sound in the context of soft G, why not finish the topic and discuss the choice between GE vs DGE. Once there why not finish with CH vs TCH as they are so analogous, why wait until another book. With regards to the plurals-why not study the complete set of rules along with the irregular plurals which for a native speaker are well known. I feel I do a lot of unnecessary jumping around, pulling the information from here and there. Overall, as I said, the information is great, I just wish it was organized in a manner that seams more logical, at least to me.
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