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hereinantwerp
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| Posted: Sept 13 2006 at 1:30pm | IP Logged
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I'm trying to work with my son on learning to read and write, and I find that his attention span is about 30 minutes for focused "tabletime" work (not including read aloud and art, which he loves & we do separately). That means reading, phonics, math, handwriting, ALL of it. Well, that's about all I manage to get in w/the toddler anyway  , but I'm trying to decide, what are the most important things to do?
He is 7 yo and we are still at the beginning to decode stage of reading--cat, mat, and, gus, gum, etc.
Last year we practiced "reading" (SUPER easy books, over and over), then I would have him copy a sentence or a few, which he did easily and never seemed to mind. But, I never noticed that the copywork never seemed to lead to him making any connections with the words, so this year I haven't been doing it. In THEORY (a la Charlotte Mason), you could accomplish many things through copywork, but in practice, those things just didn't seem to be happening. So this year I am: Still having him practice reading the easy books, since my mom (a 1st grade teacher for 20+ years) says this is more important than anything else. Then we'll talk about a phonetic pattern most days, (eg. "et" words), maybe having him think of other words with that pattern while I write them out or occasionally he copies them, pointing out that same pattern in the readers, etc. Then at least 2 or 3 times a week we try to play little games (a la Ruth Beechik) or I've been having him practice the patterns on Starfall.
Then, IF we have time/attention left, we do a bit of math! We are trying to hit the telling time and calendar thing regularly. He likes math--no problems there so far--it just seems like reading is more important, and maybe we can catch up more with math later (I hope!).
But we're generally not getting to handwriting, or copywork, or any other writing. And I have this nagging feeling that maybe I ought to do other things too, but there's this time factor--I just lose him. He's on his head or under the table and I've reached my frustration limit anyway.
I feel like things are really "hit or miss" right now, and don't feel confident that we're progressing on a "track" or something. Although he is--AT LAST--making some of the initial connections re. letter sounds and beginning blending! That's better than last year.
Theoretically we could do one more session a day, but--realistically that probably wouldn't happen. The 30 minute or so limit really does seem about right for him, he is just not cut out for this "sit still school" stuff--not to mention that I don't know when I'd do it. Wish dad could do it, LOL, he's much more patient, but his schedule is too irregular.
So, do you think we're doing the right things???
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Angela Nelson
Mother to Simon (13), Calvin (9), and Lyddie Rose (3)
my blog: live and learn
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ALmom
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| Posted: Sept 13 2006 at 4:21pm | IP Logged
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What about alternating your main focus for the day - so that the written or more seat type work for a day is either in reading/phonics or math and then do fun games to reinforce the concept for the other area that day and then switch. So if on Monday, he is reading a short book outloud and you are discussing phonics - then for Math do something really active and fun in terms of a game to reinforce math. We might play a board game with 2 dice if the child were beginning addition - but pick one of his favorites so it is like playtime rather than schooltime.
Calendar work is really easy. Make or purchase a calendar where you have cards, blocks, whatever for the days of the month, and week, the numbers from 1 to 31 and even seasons, saints feast days etc. Once a month, you set up a new months calendar and in between you simply post a new day of the week, feast day, date, etc. We actually have a wooden angels calendar with wooden squares to add in (days of the week are already written across the top so it is just a matter of moving the correct angel holding the banner for the month to the top of the calendar and then filling in the numbers). We would like to supplement this at our house with an item a friend's dd makes and sells - basically a pocket calendar with cardboard to put out for the month, season, liturgical colorl, day of the week, etc. It is very neat. Doing this would only take a few seconds each day, but done consistently, they would know all they needed to know about calendars in plenty of time.
Then on Tuesday, say, math would be the focus then just play games with the words. We have phonics games played like go fish, bingo, scrabble. There are games for letter sounds, you can get index cards that are spiral bound, cut them in thirds and then put a different vowel in the middle and a consonent in front and back. If they have learned digraphs, you could add those too. They can flip and read words - some may be silly but if it were a word, how would you pronounce it. My children always put random letters together and asked if this made a real word. If it didn't have a vowel, I'd point that out and say I couldn't pronounce it without a vowel. I made a box of Lauri foam alphabet letters using her lower and uppercase - using one color for consonents and one for vowels, arranged the trays alphabetically in a large bread box and let the children play at creating words. They learned the pattern very quickly. Here I would keep it fun, light and on the floor without much stress about it at all. If I only had a few minutes of childs attention at this point, then that is OK because we'll refocus more seriously on this again the next day. If we were on a roll and really moving forward in phonics, maybe we'd just do math games for a while and then go back to serious math when we are at a plateau in reading/phonics and then reinforce concepts learned with games in phonics while we move ahead in Math. If you realize that you don't have to do both every single day but keep a bit of a goal of alternating focus, you'll cover what you need.
From experience, I would have my children write from the start - but copywork, for us, is too intense in the younger grades. I prefer them to learn to write a as they learn the sound then we write, say and see it all at once. This also means the dc aren't as likely to develop the lag between that fine motor. My dc at that age could spend a few minutes each day writing - but it had to be short and it was time well spent to just teach them properly to start with - working on strokes, lines and circles, then showing them exactly how to form the letter so that they didn't develop any bad habits. Then when we start blending sounds, we try to write them too, so that they naturally start sounding out words. But make your goals small so that the child is successful. I tried not to spend more than 10 minutes with this. Shorter if needed, but doing it eveyday is really beneficial. If I only had 5 minutes, I'd rather my child properly form a single letter than practice for hours incorrectly.
Janet
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onemoretracy
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| Posted: Sept 13 2006 at 7:56pm | IP Logged
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I am very new at this, but we are using Sound Beginnings by Julia Fogassy and it has very short lessons that include writing. I have found it so easy to use. The lessons are very quick so far and the phonograms are extremely helpful. Even my 8 yr old who is reading very well is benifitting from the phongram card reviews. Perhaps all of the 'easy readers' over and over are a bit boring to him?
The idea or philosphy that really struck me was something I read in The Writing Road To Reading where Mrs. Spalding illustrates how confusing it can be to young children when they learn their letters and then try to read only to find that they learned the name of the letter, not necessarily the sound it makes when it is read. That may sound elementary, but it was like a light bulb went off in my brain! So, I am big fan of the phonogram/sound beginnings method so far.
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Tracy
DH Lee
DS Jake-10
DS Ryan-9
DS Luke-6
DD Laine-6
DD Mary Clare-3
DD Sara (Dec.6 '08)
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hereinantwerp
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| Posted: Sept 15 2006 at 2:34pm | IP Logged
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ALmom wrote:
What about alternating your main focus for the day - so that the written or more seat type work for a day is either in reading/phonics or math and then do fun games to reinforce the concept for the other area that day and then switch. So if on Monday, he is reading a short book outloud and you are discussing phonics - then for Math do something really active and fun in terms of a game to reinforce math. We might play a board game with 2 dice if the child were beginning addition - but pick one of his favorites so it is like playtime rather than schooltime.
Calendar work is really easy. Make or purchase a calendar where you have cards, blocks, whatever for the days of the month, and week, the numbers from 1 to 31 and even seasons, saints feast days etc. Once a month, you set up a new months calendar and in between you simply post a new day of the week, feast day, date, etc. We actually have a wooden angels calendar with wooden squares to add in (days of the week are already written across the top so it is just a matter of moving the correct angel holding the banner for the month to the top of the calendar and then filling in the numbers). We would like to supplement this at our house with an item a friend's dd makes and sells - basically a pocket calendar with cardboard to put out for the month, season, liturgical colorl, day of the week, etc. It is very neat. Doing this would only take a few seconds each day, but done consistently, they would know all they needed to know about calendars in plenty of time.
Then on Tuesday, say, math would be the focus then just play games with the words. We have phonics games played like go fish, bingo, scrabble. There are games for letter sounds, you can get index cards that are spiral bound, cut them in thirds and then put a different vowel in the middle and a consonent in front and back. If they have learned digraphs, you could add those too. They can flip and read words - some may be silly but if it were a word, how would you pronounce it. My children always put random letters together and asked if this made a real word. If it didn't have a vowel, I'd point that out and say I couldn't pronounce it without a vowel. I made a box of Lauri foam alphabet letters using her lower and uppercase - using one color for consonents and one for vowels, arranged the trays alphabetically in a large bread box and let the children play at creating words. They learned the pattern very quickly. Here I would keep it fun, light and on the floor without much stress about it at all. If I only had a few minutes of childs attention at this point, then that is OK because we'll refocus more seriously on this again the next day. If we were on a roll and really moving forward in phonics, maybe we'd just do math games for a while and then go back to serious math when we are at a plateau in reading/phonics and then reinforce concepts learned with games in phonics while we move ahead in Math. If you realize that you don't have to do both every single day but keep a bit of a goal of alternating focus, you'll cover what you need.
From experience, I would have my children write from the start - but copywork, for us, is too intense in the younger grades. I prefer them to learn to write a as they learn the sound then we write, say and see it all at once. This also means the dc aren't as likely to develop the lag between that fine motor. My dc at that age could spend a few minutes each day writing - but it had to be short and it was time well spent to just teach them properly to start with - working on strokes, lines and circles, then showing them exactly how to form the letter so that they didn't develop any bad habits. Then when we start blending sounds, we try to write them too, so that they naturally start sounding out words. But make your goals small so that the child is successful. I tried not to spend more than 10 minutes with this. Shorter if needed, but doing it eveyday is really beneficial. If I only had 5 minutes, I'd rather my child properly form a single letter than practice for hours incorrectly.
Janet |
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What great ideas. We kind of do an alternating thing w/math--
I just wondered--do you plan your learning times ahead of time, excactly what activities you'll do?
I think I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants, deciding what to do as we do it. I'm not good at either detailed planning, or recording what we do--
actually for these types of things I miss having a "checklist" of what to do each day (we used to do Sonlight). Even though I know the pace of those "set" programs would never fit this child! 
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Angela Nelson
Mother to Simon (13), Calvin (9), and Lyddie Rose (3)
my blog: live and learn
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Topic: What are the MOST important things to do?
