First Grade-Third Grade

It is September. New School year has begun. Here are our short term and long term plans.

Ballet Girl is in third grade. 
She is an independent reader and will be tasked with reading one required book per month (my choice) and anything else she chooses. My goal with this is to keep her engaged at least to some extent with well written and meaninful books. I will also ask for short book summaries, as well as short discussions about the interesting points in the books.
Writing will be primarily devoted to spelling and dictation in the first half, and to retelling of a familiar story in the second half of the school year. For spelling we will finish review the AAS3 she forgot, finish the remaining portions of AAS3 and move into AAS4.
Grammar will be addressed as nuances are encountered. I plan to incorporate grammar with the learning of bulgarian and portuguese. We will mainly be concerned with the tenses this year.

On the math front, Ballet girl is beginning with BeastAcademy, series 4. We finished the assessments for BeastAcademy series 3, and are reviewing some of the points she has forgotten. So far so good. My plan is to move through the BA4 series; to drill units conversions, especially squares; to drill the associative property of multiplication. We will definitely touch on some number theory, geometry and algebra. I will prepare her for the math challenge competition this year. We will start in earnest in October.

Portuguese is the emphasis this year. I am going to stick to individual and group instruction each day. We will finish Vamos falar portuguese and Salpicos 3. I also hope to go over most of tenses exercises in Brazilian Portuguese Grammar book 1. Listening will imporve through read alouds and youtube movies.

Bulgarian will be on a secondary stage for the first half of the year. I am putting portuguese and math ahead for the moment. However, we will refer to its grammar during portuguese lessons, and we speak it daily.

This year we will take it easy with piano.No rush to finish the book by the end of the year. I want it to be a fun and easy piano year. There will be no competitions unless she asks for it. Violin is a slightly different story. I suspect that by the end of the year the first book will be completes, and there will be a recital. I think that the teacher has a solid grasp of timing and expectations, and will help with the heavy lifting. I don't know why the piano book graduations turned out to be so stressful.

Sports will be represented by swimming lessons in the fall, gymnastics in the winter and nothing in the spring. For now, at least. We are planning a trip abroad.

Sunlight boy is in first grade. 

The emphasis for him this year is learning to read fluently in English. He can sound out words, and is already improving. We abandoned the Bob Books and went to AAR 1 which has worked great for us for the summer. We will stick with it and continue onto AAR 2, along with any other school related work.

Spelling is secondary, although he is picking up the basics fairly well. I have started with AAS1 but we will stop, go, review as needed, not as dictated by the school. I don't have expectations on that front.

Math will be interesting. We are still reviewing Grade 1(Challenging Word Problems-Singapore Math-Common Core Edition) material that he knows. He is getting better at some of the quick computations. At the moment we are focusing on time, recognizing time to the hour and half hour. We will start reviewing Grade 2 (Challenging Word Problems-Singapore Math-Common Core Edition) next month and hopefully start on Grade 3 (Sinfapore Math primary books) material in January. I do not plan on preparing him for the math challenge competition at his school. If he quaifies, he qualifies-if not, oh well!

Portuguese means daily 1-1 and group session. We are going over a book teaching reading, but we are mostly using it as a simple way to learn to listen and understand. We are also going to stick with read alouds and movies as primary sources of communication.

Bulgarian will be maintained once a week, through some short reading exercises. Once English is at a comfortable level, then I will upgrade bulgarian to reading twice a week.

Piano continues as before. He is most likely going to finish book 1 this year and have a recital. I think the review for the recital will be easier because we are constantly reviewing songs. I have lower expectations of him at this stage than I did of his sister, because he is not well coordinated yet, so I hope to not be as stressed as I was before.

Sports will be outdoor play, swimming in the fall and gymnastics in the winter, with the low possibility of soccer in the spring.

We are going to attend some classical concerts, but the venue has moved and is not as close as it was before. We are also going to see two kids' theatrical performances at the Beverly Arts Center. This year we will keep it simple. We over did it last year I think.

We have not read any particulary interesting read alouds recently. I highly recommend Mouse Called Wolf, and Leonardo DaVinci by Diane Stanley.

Bittersweet March

All journeys have their uphills and downhills. Likewise, homeschooling has been both a source of a lot of joy and a source of a lot of frustration and doubt. Before March, I never before experienced an emptiness and inadequacy, almost an apathy and indifference associated with this particular journey, almost a desire to let it go. Of course, this is not my style, so we trail on.

Accomplishments:

First, ballet girl did wonderfully at the annual math competition that her school holds. She placed first in mental math and third overall.

Both kids participated in the music school competition. Ballet girl performed wonderfully and received highest score. Sunlight boy performed very well as well. He is still walking the walk, and he is walking it with confidence, dignity and hard work. He is advancing very well.

Ballet girl is advancing very smoothly with her violin as well.

Struggles: 

Ballet girl is really bright but it has been a struggle for me to teach her mathematics which is something that I am very passionate about. I have explained, and shown examples, and yet, certain things just did not stick as I expected. I have learned to step back and return to something simple for a confidence boost. I have just wished she would more proactively reach out and do the work. As a kid, I remember early on realizing that the more problems I solved, the better I got, and the more I wanted to solve. I never stayed hungry for problems because we had tons of books. I wish my daughter would one day just reach out and experience the hunger that I had. It is something that I cannot teach. It is something that I can just arm myself with patience for. I wish she were a bit more proactive and thorough.

History and Science:

We talked mainly about ancient Greece. We talked about democracy and the way of life in the city-states. We read a few fiction and a few non-fiction books.

We will continue to cover this topic with more non-fictional books during the month of April. We will also study simple machines and learn how they helped the greeks.

This month we also did a quick impromptu run through the major religions my kids are aware of.

Reading, Writing:

Ballet girl reads independently. We are half way through AAS 3 and I am delighted with the progress she makes. We cruise effortlessly and would have advanced more but I don't think it is necessary.

Sunlight boy is reading really. He is also attempting to spell. He is quite aware of the fact that he knows how to read. He is working on finishing the Bob Books 4 set, and we will continue practicing with AAR 1.

Portuguese:

This is our weakest link. We have been reading the adventures of Hercules as presented by Monteiro Lobato. It has been a bit too long and all the characters are a bit complicated and disconnected and connected all at the same time. I bet that if you were hearing these stories over and over, the characters will eventually sink in. We will continue by returning to the adventures of Peter Pan, again retold by Monteiro Lobato.

During April, I am hoping to follow up more seriously and consistently with portuguese lessons and intense practice.

Read Alouds:

We finished the first part of the Jungle book. We like it but we will rest before we venture into the second book. I have grown tired of translating so I have been reading more and more translated literature in bulgarian.

Currently we are enjoying the bulgarian folk stories. We read about three per night and we talk about them. Nothing fancy, but I share my uncommon views with the kids. For instance on the story with the bird and gardeners, I said that the bird is not lazy - it just  has no business doing the work of the gardeners. This is not the moral kids are supposed to walk out with. I think we will read short stories for a couple of months because they are easy going and you don't have to keep track of anything monumentally complex.

Activities:

Gymnastics is ending this month. Ballet girl asked to try figure skating next year instead of gymnastics. I will probably have her try it in the fall and either do gymnastics of dance in the winter and the spring.

Sunlight boy loves gymnastics but he will be happier with soccer. Next fall is soccer once again for him. I hope he can do gymnastics again in the winter and the spring. It is good for him.

The summer both kids will be in summer camp for a month and in July we will all be back in Minnesota for two weeks, for Portuguese immersion camp.

All About Spelling and Reading

Well, it was not my intention to teach my daughter reading and spelling but oh, well, circumstances dictated otherwise. I intended to keep her from instruction in mathematics and science only with language arts and social sciences fully covered in school.

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.