Summer Reading

Samuel is participating in four summer reading programs.

The first one is for school. He is to read books from the list in this post (although I don't think he has to read them all) and complete this book report form for each book read. I like it because it gives a little bit of writing practice, but let's him be creative by drawing his favorite part of the book.So far, he has read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie", "Morris Goes to School", "Frog and Toad Together" and "Each Peach Pear Plum". The Morris and Frog books are chapter books and he would read one chapter per day, which is why the list is pretty short. Plus the fact that he is also reading other books for other lists.

The second one is from Barnes and Noble. After reading and recording eight books on a reading log, he gets a free book from a list that you can see on the website.

The third one is from the public library - ten books read (including those read to you if you are a beginning reader) gets a little backpack filled with coupons for things like a free frosty at Wendy's or admission to the art museum.

The last one is from our church. This is the first year for this so I don't know what the prizes are. The goal is to read (or have read to you if you are a beginning reader) 25 books by the end of the summer. For each 5 books read, you get a prize. Each reading log has space for 15 books. For each reading log completely filled and turned in, you get a chance for the "big prize" drawing at the end of the summer. I don't know what the big prize is, probably a bible. The only rule is that you have to include at least 5 bible stories on your list. I have started asking Samuel to read stories from "The Beginner's Bible" at bedtime, but I haven't put any of these on the list. I think they should count, though, don't you?

New Reading Idea I "Discovered"!

My title is very tongue and cheek. Mostly I steal ideas from the much more organized and experienced homeschooling mom blogs I read. However the seed of this idea actually came from my cousin who does not homeschool, but has two voracious reader sons. She was telling me at Christmas that they both always have a book or two in the car to read. Well, most of our car trips are very short in-the-neighborhood errands, so I didn't really think about that as a homeschooling idea. Plus he is reading on his own, but not silently and I thought I had to be looking at the same page so I can correct if needed.

Today I decided to throw that out the window. By accident, at the Half Price book store, I discovered a "Junior Chapter Book" version of a series of books he and his dad read together. Flipping through the pages I knew this would be a challenge for him, but thought the familiarity with the characters and stories would keep him going.

Fridays we have two 20 minute or so drive times. This morning we were listening to an audiobook. We had not finished it and I expected him to want to hear more for the afternoon drive. I had forgotten I had thrown the new book on the back seat. He saw it and decided to read. Remember he is not a silent reader so he is reading aloud to me, although often I couldn't hear his precise words due to traffic and road noise. Every now and then he would speak up louder and read a sentence with a spelled word and then tell me his "guess". He was usually close, but it allowed me to help him with unknown words even though I couldn't see the page.

This I decided was a much better way to teach a LOVE of reading, as opposed to just reading lessons (although he will certainly still get those). Later he told me he loves so many things - dancing, singing and reading!

Product Review - ETC Online

I received an e-mail from Homeschool Buyers Co-op and followed a link to this product and to look it over. I am thinking about purchasing either a math or phonics computer "game" for summer school around here. I looked it over on my own and then called Samuel in to do the student demo. I started him at the end of Book 1 which I knew would be no challenge. Most of the exercises entailed reading two sentences and matching one of them to a picture.

It kept working him up the demo levels (not all inclusive) until I knew he wasn't reading or comprehending all the words in the sentences. However, he could read enough of the words to match one correctly to a sentence. To me, this defeats the purpose of telling me where we need to do more off-line work. To be fair, I skipped ahead to a higher level (words ending in -ed) and there were no pictures. That "game" entailed filling in the blank from a list of words to make the sentence make sense.

I have not used the ETC books before, so this may be a good fit for a family who likes and uses these books. It just isn't what I am looking for.

Christmas Book Review - Level 1 Appropriate

We have checked out two Christmas books recently that Samuel could read. He is currently reading Level 1 readers with minimal help. Both are secular.

"Christmas Mice" by Bethany Roberts is a cute story of how some mice prepare for Christmas, decorating, baking, wrapping presents, singing, etc. There is also a sweet surprise.

"Claude the Dog: A Christmas Story" by Dick Gackenbach tells of a dog who receives some presents from his family and then meets a homeless dog and ends up giving all his presents away because his family is the best gift of all.

Readers we are enjoying

I don't have a plan for the books Samuel reads for his reading practice time (most days). I look at lists (Sonlight, Rainbow Resource, other blogs) and try to find them at the library, as well as just trying to find readers while visiting the library. We also have some books in our home library that he is free to pick from and read multiple times. Since I am always on the look-out for book ideas I thought I would share a list of some of the readers we have enjoyed this year (most are pre-level 1 or level 1 if they are a graded type reader):

"Go Away Dog" by Joan L. Nodset
"Berenstain Bears and the Baby Chipmunk"
"DK Wild Baby Animals" by Karen Wallace
"DK A Trip to the Zoo" by Karen Wallace
"DK Diving Dolphin" by karen Wallace
"Mr. Brown Can Moo" by Dr. Seuss
"Dr. Seuss' The Shape of Me and Other Stuff"
"First the Egg" by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
"Big Dog...Little Dog" by P. D. Eastman
"Here Comes Silent 'e'" by Anna Jane Hayes
"Tricky Monkey Up On Top" by Jane Belk Moncure
"Fox in Socks" by Dr. Seuss
"Big Pig and Little Pig" by David McPhail
"Fred and Ted Like to Fly" by Peter Eastman

Preschool Curriculum - Bible and Phonics

Samuel's birthday in at the end of July, and this curriculum started just after he turned 4. He said he wanted to learn to read. We had been playing around with a magnetic letter tile set I bought at a Learning Store, although I wasn't really trying to teach him to read. I told him most boys don't learn to read until they are 5 or 6, but he said he wanted to so I added phonics to this year, although I still believe most kids would be better off waiting until at least 5 for anything other than letter recognition and letter sounds.



Bible – We read through the entire Beginner’s Bible (Zonderkidz). I plan to use this again as a reader when he is at that level (as of now, I'm thinking age 6). In December and January, we took a break from this bible to read the Christmas stories and the book of Matthew from my NIV bible. For memory, he joined a local Awana club. It turns out he has a gift for memorizing verses.

Phonics – After checking out both Phonics Pathways and Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading from the library and trying a few lessons in each, I found Progressive Phonics. By Christmas, he had made it through all five short vowel readers and when we started the first intermediate reader (with beginning blends, like “fr” in frog), he was getting bored. So, from January on, we read through Sonlight’s Fun Tales books and I checked out different Level 1 readers from the library and asked him to read me a few pages every couple of nights at bedtime.