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Kathryn
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is I have no idea what road map I'm following!  I only started homeschooling my big kids in grades 3rd and 5th (they're now 6th and 8th). I have always tended to shy away from any boxed curriculum or such but now that DD 5 is on my heels all.day.long to do "school" I've been trying to give her things to do from worksheets or books I have around here and crafts and work with her for kindergarten. She wants to read sooo bad.
The problem I'm running into is that I really don't know step 1, step 2, step 3 etc. Seems logical but I guess since my son has such issues with learning and he's STILL at age 12 "learning to read" (probably dyslexia and we're doing a program for that) but I want to do things right just in case there are any issues with her. We've worked with letter sounds and in this book I was reading it talked about the order of introducing the letters with the soft sounds, hard sounds, blends etc. How do I know where to start and move to if I'm not using a progressive program and just pulling my own together? Same with numbers. She can count to 100 and by 10s so we started on 5s and then I started working with her on "reading" 2 digit numbers. I couldn't understand why she doesn't know them yet and I looked on-line and apparently that's not really something she should already know and be able to recognize all the 2 digit numbers to 100. 
Soo...if you don't follow a curriculum...how do you know the natural steps to progress from?
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CatholicMommy
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There are several guidebooks such as "what your 1st grader should know" - that sound like they might of use as a guidepost of what to cover. It might not help with the fine details such as which letter sounds when, but to give a general idea of what is generally appropriate for a grade level.
I have always gravitated towards Montessori (now am full into it) because it gives a framework and a foundation and lots of free time to explore personal interests. But if I didn't have that, I would likely be very, very unschooly and use just such guidebooks OR check the state requirements for public school to be sure we're hitting the right skills and topics close to the same ages.
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SallyT
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Hmm, well . . . this may not be the answer you're looking for, but while I don't, overall, use a boxed curriculum, I have no problem using *pieces* of prepared curriculum, eg a phonics program, especially for foundational skills like reading. I was in the same position as you, having begun to homeschool with children who had been to school and had at least some foundation in basic skills, so that when my younger kids were suddenly kindergarten age, it was like, "Oh, wait! I have no idea how to teach reading!"
I was never interested in an entire curriculum package, but CHC's Little Stories for Little Folks plus the Little Angel Readers really saved my life, in terms of having the progression laid out for me. Otherwise, I would have floundered, and what I might have been able to come up with on my own would not really have improved on the already-prepared programs out there. We did use phonics programs as *tools,* not as the organizing principle of our whole day, but I did find it profoundly helpful to know what we were going to do in that area from day to day -- or at least, what would make sense to do from day to day, whether we actually did it quite that way or not.
Ditto math. I might depart from a given program, take it at our own pace, mix it with other resources, and otherwise tailor it to our needs, but having the big picture thought through for me, in a subject area where I don't have a clear enough vision myself for how things need to go, is again very helpful. It's much easier to look over a math workbook and say, "We're ready for this; not ready for that; I can think of a better way to do this; we can skip that because it's being covered by X other resource or by real-life learning; we need to slow down and take a whole week to do this one page," than it is to figure out, out of the clear blue sky, what we ought to be doing next.
I tend to think of a curriculum item as something like a growth chart -- I want my kid to be on the chart, ideally, and that's where the chart itself is helpful, in giving me a baseline, or an average, to work with. At any given time, the child in question might be in a higher or lower "percentile" with regard to that average, and that's generally fine. We just try to keep that average in our range of vision.
And it is much easier to use curriculum "pieces" in a free and custom-tailored way when you aren't trying to fit everything into the big picture of a whole program that isn't your own. I go for pretty basic resources -- MCP for math, for example, which is the very definition of basic -- precisely because they don't have scripted lessons or a big vision with which I then have to decide whether I agree or not. It's pretty easy to take a basic "do this, then do the next thing" item and pair it with, say, something fun and conceptual (we do MCP with Life of Fred, for example), and let the two resources "speak" to each other in our day. Those two resources don't move forward over the same ground at the same time, but I don't worry about that so much -- they complement and reinforce and extend each other in interesting ways. At the same time, I'm never stuck on Sunday night going, "What are we going to do for math this week? What should people learn next??" People who know more than I do about math learning have already made those decisions, different though their decisions might be, and beyond my choice to use them together, my only job is to move forward with them, which is easy and usually pretty fun.
Does that make sense? Is it at all what you were asking? What I'm trying to body over here is how it's possible to piggyback on the work other people have done to lay out a program in a given subject, without necessarily having to let that program be your homeschooling boss, relieving you of guesswork while maintaining the freedom of your own vision.
Sally
PS: Rebecca Rupp's Home Learning Year by Year is also a very good resource for age-appropriate learning guidelines, so that you can design your own program. Catholicmommy's post made me remember that!
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Claire F
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Ruth Beechick's books might be helpful to you. They are small booklets, really, but give a lot of great information on how to approach teaching basic skills like reading at home. I have A Home Start in Reading and one other of her books. I find them very practical and helpful. Rather than being a curriculum or program, it lays out the basics of how to teach your child. And at $4, it is a pretty minimal investment.
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mariB
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I really do love Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I did a half lesson a day and made flash cards with the new sounds. I taught all 5 of our kids with that book.
For Religion, Math, and English we always like to follow some sort of curriculum and the rest of our learning is more unschooly...although I have a plan like for history..this year it's modern history..or for science...this year it is earth science.
Praying for guidance for you. Even after 15 years of homeschooling, I am always second guessing myself and I think a lot of homeschooling moms second guess themselves.
May God bless you in your decision making!
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JuliaT
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I agree with Sally. I do not use boxed curriculum but I do piece curriculum together, especially for the basics as I don't want to miss a step.
I am finding, though, that once I have done a grade level in a subject with my oldest, I am able to wing it more with my younger two cause I know more about what I am doing. But when it is the first time around, I still use a program to help me along.
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Kathryn
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Thanks! I will check out those resources and look into the phonics and math program.
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kristacecilia
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I also use pieces of curricula like the Little Angel Readers and a math program like MCP Math K or Math Mammoth or Life of Fred for those particular subjects. As for the big overall picture of all the subjects, I took the advice of the Simply Charlotte Mason lady and wrote my big picture of what I roughly wanted to cover and when.
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Kathryn
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Ok, this may be the most ridiculous question ever and being we're from TX, some say we have an accent so sometimes our words don't sound the same to others.  Anyway, I remembered that I purchased the Bob books this summer for DD 5 so I pulled them out and started on book 1. She knows all her letters, sounds, a very few words so it said this has only 4 sounds so should be easy to start. My main question is between Mat and Sam...the "a" makes 2 different sounds, right?! So in trying to get her to sound out s-a-t and then s-a-m the a had 2 different sounds...at least to my Texas ears. I mean, really, when you say "at" and "am" it is different? It got me to thinking that maybe I should have a list of sight words for her to start. ?
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CatholicMommy
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I am from Michigan and I hear two different a sounds in there - a "long" a in sam (so says its own name) and a "short" a in mat (doesn't quite make its own name). Now, when I say "am" I use the short a - but Sam has the long a.
But frankly, with these sort of words - if they are pronounced the same or slightly different - will just produce accents - that, within reading, wear off to become one's own accent as the stories read aloud and heard aloud and connections are made between the words on the page, the words in the child's mind and the words being heard.
In Montessori, there is a big push of late to adapt all the learning materials to various accents - I find it too tedious and I've worked with children with LOTS of accents! They all learn to read, regardless of the organization of the sounds.
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Amanda
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Well, I don't know if this helps or not, but I have the same sound in Sam and sat (I'm from NJ/PA). However, many phonics programs will use dog/hog, and those have totally different vowel sounds in my accent. :-) It drives me crazy. (I will admit that I wrote to a kids' TV show and asked them to use different words--not to accommodate MY accent, but because there are many words that are pronounced more or less the same across the country.)
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JodieLyn
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Here's a list of the dolch sight words
And remember the goal of sounding out words is to start reading faster than if you only sight read.. but after a bit of time you're not sounding out the words.. but simply sight reading them.
If a particular word is causing you problems like Sam (we say Mat and Sam the same..) But if Sam is a problem.. put a piece of a blank white sticker over the word and name him anything else that would give you the sound being learned. But also be sure that the vowel sound is really changing and not just sounding a bit different because of the different consonants.. try holding the sound out real long so that you can really hear just the vowel to check on that.
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Ok...well I'm glad to know it is an accent thing. I really felt dumb posting the question but I couldn't (in my ears) hear them the same. We do say "at" and "am" differently. So, I could just change the name to Pat or something similar.
I will print out that sight word list. Both my kids had those in kinder at school so I'll at least print it up.
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CrunchyMom
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It isn't an accent thing, but neither is the a in Sam long. That would be "same" and Sam doesn't sound like same either. The vowel sound is the same in sat as in Sam, the difference is the act of closing your lips to make the mmmm sound creates a diphthong. In essence, you are "forced" to make an "ih" sound after the short a. Sss...ah...ih...mmmm. Southerners do emphasize the second half of a diphthong more than other accents, which could create some confusion. Perhaps it would help to modify the way she is sounding the m? Try saying "em" rather than just "mmmm" ?
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CrunchyMom
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Sorry to double post, but to clarify, an ending m sound will be subtly different in this way. I wouldn't say "em" at the beginning of a word, but ending a word means you start sounding the em with your mouth already open. Does that make sens? It isn't so much of a factor if the vowel is a short i or e, but there is more "space" when going from a short a to a closed mmm.
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SallyT
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I'm a Southerner, and I think I know what you mean: people here would say "Say-am." (and when I was growing up, all my aunts were "aints"). But they don't say "say-at" for"sat." They'd say, actually, something like, "I sat day-own."
I can't remember this coming up with my kids, but I think I'd have said something like, "Well, our accents make us pronounce things differently sometimes, and sometimes when a letter is next to a certain kind of other letter, it changes the way we say it ever so slightly, but this really is the same a that you hear in 'sat.'"
Sally
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CatholicMommy
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Well I stand corrected ;)
When I say Sam though, and hold out the vowel, it really is a long a I am using - however it changes to a short a just before I get to the m, and then there's a dipthong but it all happens so fast, it comes out sounding like a long a -- and yes, very similar to saying "same", just with that little blip before the m to change the overall sound.
I still say - the children work through it - if they have questions, I answer or help them explore, otherwise I let it go and just learn to read and write and speak :)
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CrunchyMom
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Now that you explain it, I think I can hear it better. Since all long vowels are technically diphthongs, it IS confusing. Really the long A is eh and ih (ei), if one is spending a lot of time on the ih, whether one is using the short e or a at the front end is pretty subtle.
I think perhaps we are more likely to make the differentiation in one syllable words than two, often turning those one syllable names to two? I'm imagining yelling across the back yard to get "Sam's" attention.  "Saaaaah--iiiiihm" Clearly two syllables for most of us in that scenario. Samuel is probably going to sound a bit different, even though it is obviously the same vowel sound.
My background knowledge is in diction for singing and theater, not in speech therapy or language, so my habit is to make a highly accurate and "pretty" choice when blending  , but obviously all the extra sounds that we use to blend and connect sounds are highly personal and regional. I think that phonics as a tool is in large part based on "proper" British pronunciations, but it is just that, a tool.
I do know that the proper, choral way to SING Sam would use the short a rather than "eh," adding the diphthong at the *very* last, otherwise it would sound like you were singing "same." But I wouldn't tell Patsy Cline she was wrong either
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Kathryn wrote:
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Since we use the "I See Sam" readers, this would be a lot of work for us
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Lindsay
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I think I say it more like "S-eh-m" but definitely as one syllable, not 2. In thinking about it, words like cat and can we pronounce different c-a-t (short a like apple) and c-eh-n. And long a to me def. says it's name so I don't hear a long a at all in there the way we say it. A friend's daughter's name is even Samantha but she goes by Sammy and everyone pronounces it "Seh-me" (now of course that's 2 syllable).
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: The problem when not following curriculum
