Language Lessons Through Literature

Lydia finished Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten.  I decided a while back that once she learned how to write her letters, we would start copywork.  I've had Language Lessons Through Literature on my radar for a few months and bought it back in December.   It is a fairly gentle, Charlotte Mason/Classical hybrid grammar program.  It uses children's classics, poems, art, and copywork to teach grammar and writing.  I decided to give it a try, thinking I'd like it well enough.

I bought the book and the PDF workbook.  The workbook isn't required because the book has all the assignments and copywork sentences in it, but the PDF has all the copywork in several different handwriting fonts, including HWT, which was huge for me.  Rather than copy each onto paper individually, I can now just print them right off!

Today we did our first day, so this is by no means an exhaustive review, but we had a good first experience and I wanted to share.  The first book is Peter Rabbit.  Lydia, Ellie, and I sat down together and read the book.  The girls really enjoyed the story and when it was time to do copywork, Lydia was very interested in the sentence that was from her story.  We talked about sentences starting with a capitol letter and ending with punctuation (she already knows about period, question marks, and exclamation marks).  At the end I had her draw a picture from Peter Rabbit and she loved doing it. She loved it so much she kept on drawing the rest of the day.  Eleanor saw her having fun with it and decided she just had to join in and do her own "copywork" (scribbles with crayons).  Lydia also pretended Peter Rabbit later. I played Mr. McGregor.

Peter (complete with shoes), Mr. McGregor, and the garden gate.

"Mr. McGregor said, 'Who ate a bite out of my tomato!? I'm going to eat you up!"

I'm excited to see where this goes in the future.

Weekly Report: Days 56-69

School is back on full-swing.  We are behind schedule a bit so we've been careful to do at least 5 days of school a week for the last few weeks.  Everything is going well and it has been handy because Lydia's therapist has taken over some of the schooling duties for me, but I'm still completely in the game.

Reading:
Lydia is through lesson 138 in OPGTR.  She has started silent letters and is rocking them.  I'm pretty proud of her.  She also reached her January Book-It goal of reading 8 books.  Next month I think we are going to go with 10.  Book-It has really motivated her to read.  She is very excited to "reach her goal" every month.  She's been really enjoying Syd Hoff books lately and I actually caught her reading one to herself a little bit before we read it together!

Playing with their "romper-stompers."  They are "so tall!"

Math:
We're still working on counting-on and counting-back, but Lydia's biggest achievement is that she can now read an analog clock.  Her therapist has been working on it with her and she went from not being able to read one at all to now she can read to 5 minutes every time and to the minute sometimes.  She's been doing so well that we bought her a new clock for her room.  She loves it.

Eleanor insisted that she should be called "Super Ballerina Eleanor"

Memorization/ Spelling/ Handwriting:
Spelling and handwriting are still coming along, although fairly slowly.  Lydia did finish learning her lowercase letters, so I guess I need to start doing copywork!  Man, I guess I should come up with a plan for that, huh? Lydia also finished memorizing "The Swing" and has decided to start "The Fisherman" which will be her longest poem yet.

My little engineer practicing her handwriting. (I promise she has better pencil grip than that).

Religion:
We usually read a page from the scriptures every night when Daddy is home before bedtime.  But when Daddy isn't home, I've been reading the girls a section from the Illustrated Book of Mormon.  The girls enjoyed it well enough, but we finished and it was a little above their level anyways.  When we were at my parent's house for Christmas I was able to convince them to let me take home their complete set of Illustrated Stories from the Book of Mormon which have been out of print for a long time.  Although they are a little dated (from the 60s), the girls are loving them and we already finished Vol. 1.

Weekly Report: Days 51-55

With Lydia's new therapy getting started and Christmas, complete with Tyler's interviews and a trip to Grandma's house, we had a busy December.  We really didn't do much school, but we are back to the grind now and did a full week this week!  But first, here are some pictures from Christmas. Thanks to my sister for taking most of these.

Christmas morning in their Christmas pj's, wings, and crowns.

Great Grandma reading Lydia and Adelaide (and Brodi) a story.

Lydia playing with cousin Sam's tee-ball set

Eleanor got lots of dress-up stuff for Christmas

Grandpa reading all the girls and Aunt Hannah a story

Eleanor got a manicure

Reading:

Lydia got through lesson 126 in OPGTR.  I forgot to mention that she read her 5 books in December for her Book-it goal as well.  5 was a little easy, but I knew it was going to be a short month school-wise, so I didn't up it.  This month she has a goal of 8 books and has already completed two, so I think she'll make it again.  We've started just picking out books from the beginning reader section at the library for her to complete it and that is going well.  For December she read Happy Birthday, Thomas!, Summertime in the Big Woods, Thomas and the School Trip, Mother Bear's Robin (Little Bear), and Wintertime in the Big Woods.

Math:

I've been mostly staying away from curricula for a few weeks and don't plan on going back much for a little bit.  Right now I'm working on Education Unboxed video suggestions but mostly I'm focusing on getting her to be able to count-on and count-back, with a goal of being able to count-on a specific number of times. Once she gets this concept, I think I'll be ready to start letting her memorize math facts and maybe get back to the curricula.

Handwriting/Spelling:

Lydia is only a few letters away from finishing learning how to write lowercase letters.  Once she does that, we'll be moving to copywork while she learns how to write her numbers.  Spelling is going well and there is a lot of cross-over between spelling and handwriting, but not much else to say except we are moving forward with it.

Weekly Report: Days 43-50

Well, we are all feeling better, but we've had a fairly busy month.  Lydia has started her new therapy that is taking up a lot of our time and we are having a tricky time getting into a new groove, but we will get there.  I've also been trying to figure out where I'm going with Lydia's math and haven't quite settled on something yet.  Hopefully we'll get it all figured out by the next year.

Adelaide working hard on the computer

Reading:
Lydia keeps getting better and better with reading.  We are getting to the point now where I think I'm going to need to start having Lydia read "real" books on occasion.  She is already reading some that we get from the library, but I think I am going to have her working on it more deliberately.  She is on lesson 122 in OPGTR.

Snow Day

I think she's been reading to herself a little too.  I got her a Thomas the Train book from the library and she spent a few days looking at it.  Today, when she read it to me, she did it almost flawlessly and very quickly, suggesting that she had read it before.  I am so excited that reading is becoming a bigger part of her life.
It was funny, the other day I was talking to her speech therapist and she mentioned that they just discovered she could read when they were doing flashcards with her and she was reading the answers.  Good for her.

Lydia: Learning addition facts while making an "Eiffel Tower."  Win/win!

Math:

Like I said, we are sort of trying to figure out where to go from here.  I'm not ready for Lydia to memorize math facts.  I'm not sure why, but I just don't think she should yet.  So I'm trying to figure out how to slow her down while helping her get really solid on her number sense.  Right now I think I'm going to work on a combination Kitchen Table Math and Education Unboxed videos.

Eleanor maybe had a little bit of help with this one.

Spelling:

Lydia finished Step 13 in AAS.  She has also been writing when she draws.  I love to go through her pictures and read the captions and little things she writes.  So far she seems to have a knack for remembering how words are spelled.  She is by nowhere near perfect, but she does a pretty good job at least trying.

"Ounch apon a time a bus wint to school"

Weekly Report: Days 39-42

At the Houston Arboretum, waiting for Daddy to finish his interview.

Well, I mentioned in my last weekly report that I was sick.  I still am. This is the cold that never ends.  Luckily, I'm at least functional and have done a little school.  Unfortunately, Tyler isn't as lucky.  He had another medical school interview last weekend, so we all took another car trip, this time to Houston, TX.  On the drive down, he progressively lost his voice more and more until it was completely gone, just in time for his interview.  Poor guy.  His voice is just now coming back, a week later.  He really missed being able to read the girls their bedtime story like he always does.  As a result of his cold, he was home most of last week and I never get as much school done with Daddy home.

Reading:
Lydia finished Lesson 113 in OPGTR.  She's zooming through it at a pretty fast pace now.  I'm actually starting to combine some of the shorter lessons into one day.  That is a far cry from where she was only 3 or 4 months ago where a lesson might take 3 or 4 days to complete.  At the rate she's going, I'm anticipating that we may actually finish the book by the end of Kindergarten, which would be amazing.

Since it is now November, Lydia has been working toward her new Pizza Hut Book-It goal for the month.  Last month, I vastly underestimated her and her goal was to read one story, which she did in one day.  This month, she has to read 5 stories to earn her pizza.  She has been really on top of it, asking me all the time if we "can work on my goal."  She has read four of her five required stories, so she'll probably be hitting that goal today.  The stories she read were Going to Town, Hop on Pop, and two Little Bear stories.  She is averaging a middle 2nd grade reading level, which is very exciting to me.

Eleanor continues to ask for a reading lesson every day I do reading with Lydia.  How can I say no to that?  We are slowly working through the McGuffey app I mentioned last week and watching a few of the Reading Bear videos where they sound out words for her.  Blending is holding her back a little.  That, and I'm really not feeling inspired to start teaching her read yet.  I think now that Lydia is starting to really catch on, the idea of starting over at the beginning isn't appealing to me.  That's my own issue, and I'm trying not to let my own inclinations affect Eleanor.  She's so young (newly three), that I don't think I can hurt her at this point, regardless of what we do. Thus all the reading apps and videos.  They are the happy medium for now.  I've promised myself that if she figures out blending with any sort of reliability, I will buckle down and start doing reading with her in earnest.

Adelaide loves reading too!

Math:
I'm trying to figure out what to do with math.  I feel like Lydia is sort of floating along and not really learning anything new or grasping any of the extra number-sense concepts that Math Mammoth is trying to teach her.  I'm also trying to figure out if I should start teaching her math facts.  Right now, I'm leaning towards stepping back from Math Mammoth for a bit and focusing on Miquon and math games.  We'll see what we do, but I do think I need to pause a bit at the moment and make sure she gets some of these concepts down solid.

"Winie the Pooh and Piglit (and Eeyore)"

Spelling:
I'm doing so much better with spelling now that we have the Sound Literacy app.  Lydia likes it too and is much happier to do spelling.  We finished through Lesson 11.  She has also been writing a lot in her free time.  Usually, she writes words that describe the pictures she draws.  I just love to see her using the things she's learning.

Weekly Report: Days 32-38

This has been a busy few weeks, and I have a feeling that the next several months are going to be that way.  Tyler has started interviewing with internal medicine residencies and whenever possible, we are traveling with him.  Luckily, the girls are good travelers.  This last weekend we went to Dayton, OH.  It would have been lots of fun except that on the drive there I felt myself getting sicker and sicker.  I powered through it enough to be able to go see the things we wanted to see, but 5 days later I'm still feeling poorly.  So, we haven't done school at all this week.

 

In Dayton, OH, we went to the National Air Force Museum.  It was really neat and the girls loved seeing all the airplanes and helicopters.  If you ever get a chance, I suggest that you take the time. We only spent a few hours, but could have spent so much longer if the girls would have let us read the plaques.  My favorite was that we saw the actual airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.  For some reason that made it very real for me.

Eleanor the Astronaut

Reading:
Lydia is on Lesson 106 in OPGTR and is starting on all the ways to read the "oo."  She continues to improve in speed and pick up other stuff from all the non OPGTR practice reading she's been doing.  It is an exciting time for me to see her making this kind of good progress after working so hard with her.
Eleanor has been begging me for reading lessons and we are doing the McGuffey app on the iPad for the moment (I got it for free).  The app is really neat as it basically just takes the old McGuffey speller that all the pioneers learned to read with and turns it into iPad lessons.  I doubt we'll use it all the way through, but as a place holder, Eleanor's enjoying it well enough and it requires no prep for me. I think with a lot of work she could probably start OPGTR right now, but I don't want to put in that work yet, so I'm mostly holding off and working on solidifying her letter sounds and starting on some phonetic awareness activities informally ("what letter starts the word cat?").

Lydia in front of part of Apollo 15

Math:
Math continues as normal.  I see her making some number sense connections, which is great.  We continue to do a page of Math Mammoth and a page of Miquon daily right now.

Adelaide eating the dirt at the park.

Memorization:
The big news on this front is that Lydia finished the first 1/4 of her timeline, "Ancient Times."  Today she learned "John the Baptist" and that was the last one for the first group.  She has learned 42 items on the timeline and I think she just might make it through the entire thing this year.  She also finished the 5th Article of Faith, "Autumn" by Emily Dickinson, and has started the 6th Article of Faith.  It is amazing how quickly she picks up poems and I'm already wondering if I picked enough for her to do this year.

Spelling:
I haven't been great about spelling lately because Eleanor and Adelaide got into our magnet letter tiles for AAS one day and now 8 of them are missing, likely never to be seen again.  It really bummed me out.  Since then, I've been using spelling as sort of an extra handwriting practice for Lydia, but that meant we were only getting through maybe 4 words a day and her frustration level with spelling was much higher.  So last week I bit the bullet and bought the Sound Literacy app for our iPad, which is basically just a virtual version of the letter tiles.  It is the most expensive app I ever bought, but I knew that once I had it, I would be 10 times more likely to do spelling and that Lydia would probably do spelling more happily as she likes anything iPad related.  So far so good.  It hasn't been optimized for OS7 yet, so it crashes a lot which bothers me, but I'm going to hold off and hope that it will get better soon.  As a result, Lydia finished Lesson 10 in All About Spelling last week.

Weekly Report: Days 28-31

We had a good week again.  We finished it off by visiting a pumpkin patch place nearby with the grandparents.  It was a really fun day.  Other than that, our week was pretty uneventful and normal.

Adelaide made this grumpy face the whole time she sat in the corn pit.

Reading:

Lydia is through lesson 98 in OPGTR which is the beginning of section 11.  She is easily getting through a lesson a day right now, although I have been adding a little bit of extra practice occasionally from Phonics Pathways when I don't think OPGTR has enough.  Her reading continues to take off, and this week we read another story from Little Bear ("Little Bear Goes to the Moon").  I've learned that Lydia will happily read large quantities of material if she is promised a candy for her efforts.

Eleanor also asked for me to do reading with her a few days this week, so we are working on the letter sounds.  She wants a candy too. 

Eleanor loved riding the ponies.

Math:

Lydia did a page of both Math Mammoth and Miquon most days this week.  She is doing great with both of them.  We are going at a slower pace than required in both to finish them in a year, but as they are both first grade programs and we are doing two programs simultaneously, I'm not too worried about it.  I just want her to get a solid foundation.

Science:

We are not doing formal science this year, but I am sort of unschooling it and we had some good science discussions this week.  We had a long discussion about lightning and thunder.  It was storming outside and Lydia didn't understand how they were related.  We ended up watching an episode of Magic School Bus about rainstorms to help her.

She has also developed a sudden fascination with anatomy and doctors.  She keeps doing examinations on her animals and has spent several hours playing with a few new human body apps I got for her.  The two main ones are Toca Doctor and The Human Body by Tinybop.  I love almost every Toca app we have, but this one is not incredibly scientific.  It is more of preschool level app to teach broad principles rather than actual anatomy.  The Human Body, however, is a very impressive app.  It is relatively new and I am happy to find it.  Several months ago I spent a lot of time looking for an app like it and it didn't exist yet.  My medical student husband was even impressed by it.  Anyways, I might talk more about these apps later, but we've had a lot of fun discussions about aspects of them, especially the various systems of the body and what they do.

Lydia conquered the hay tower.

Memorization:

Lydia is still working on the 5th Article of Faith, although I expect her to get it down this week.  She also got to "Roman Republic" in her timeline and both girls continue to love practicing their timeline daily.  

Art:

The girls have the 8 art selections for this semester down as well as their countries of origin.  I realized that all except one of them are landmarks in our Barefoot World Atlas app, so I've been having Lydia try to find them there as part of her practice.  It is a good way to combine geography and art!  Plus, she needs more practice with a globe-style map as we do most of our practicing on a wall map.

I ordered the first book in the Draw Write Now series for Lydia.  She loves drawing and I'd love for her to learn to draw passably.  She really loved it and drew several pictures using the instructions.  I'll share one some time.

Although she got stuck in every hole there was, Adelaide still enjoyed climbing on the straw pyramid.