All About Reading Level 1, complete

We celebrated the last lesson of All About Reading Level 1 with a tea party today. Tim joined us, and we drank tea and ate chocolate while she read the final two short stories, "Hal and Gus Go on a Trip" and "The Best Lunch."

I can't say enough good things about this curriculum. It has worked so well for both of us. Her skill, confidence, and speed as a reader has exploded the last few months because of the thorough practice gained in these lessons. I am proud of her.

Hey, I even learned some things in the last few lessons--about short and long vowels, and open and closed syllables. I supposed I learned the same things in first grade but had forgotten. Now we both know why the e in "he" says a different sound than the e in "hem," and how to decode open and closed syllables. Neat!

Comments

And, that's a wrap!

We finished Anya's first grade school year about three weeks ago, with a little popsicle celebration on the porch. We paged through a little book I've kept throughout the year of various projects; skimmed through some math workbook pages; looked at the first short story reader she started with back in September. It was fun to be reminded of where she started, and how much she's learned this year. I’ll share some photos. Math: where we started Math: where we finished up Handwriting/writing: where we started Handwriting/writing: where we finished up (Paragraph mapping) (Rough draft paragraph) (Final draft paragraph) Reading: where we started (This was review from kindergarten since we switched programs) Reading: where we finished Beyond all of these skills, and much more important, I am so pleased and proud about the girl she's becoming. Our family experienced a lot of change this year, as we welcomed and adjusted to anothe...

The start of a new year

I'd like to share semi-regularly about what we're up to at the Colton Family Schoolhouse--our schoolhouse being not only our school room in the loft, but the school of life with our girls. We're in the start of our third year of homeschooling with Anya. We have grown from using a tiny preschool table in one corner of the loft, to now a big desk and a whole half of the loft for our daily lessons. And, we've grown from short and hands-on preschool activities and books to six formal subjects. We're now going into week six so I'll share a little about our regular routine. Breakfast: We are meditating on Gentle + Classical “morning virtues: joy.” This isn’t school time but just part of our regular morning routine. We’re learning the verses to Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee, memorizing some scripture about joy, and reading from Luke. Morning lessons: Morning circle: This is quick and mostly for Alina but it’s a nice way to open up morning lessons. Each girl ha...

Homeschool reflections

School has been in session for a full month now, and it has flown by! I have started a blog post about it several times and never finished. There seems to be too much to say, as there is a lot going on here for the second-grader and preschooler. And for me! The summer was a time of learning and processing for me, and now I get to experiment with what I absorbed from multiple books on homeschooling. I read: - Family Matters by David Guterson - The 4-Hour School Day by Durenda Wilson - Homeschool Bravel y by Jamie Erickson - parts of The Well-Trained Mind and Writing with Ease by Susan Wise Bauer - I’m starting Teach Your Own by John Holt The biggest takeaways? One of the biggest benefits of a homeschool education is that it is, in fact, not school at all. This is a terrible paraphrase of a really good quote in one of the books I read. I think it synthesizes what I learned about how a lot of what I think of as "school" or "educ...

The Colton Family Schoolhouse

Search This Blog