How our children learnt to read

Raahub Yasar (Greetings Family),

Today I wanted to share with you what we did with our children to teach them how to read as a sister asked us the other day.

Our oldest Mut Tiy En Re who's 7yrs can read pretty much fluently, our 5 yr old Sakhamtet is beginning to read much more confidently and knows many words though is not as fluent as her older sister and our 3 year old is just learning the sounds and can recognize about 10 now.

When our oldest was about 2 yrs and I was still researching stuff, a sister whose daughter was about 5 yrs old and a good reader for her age, told me that her daughter's nursery used a reading system called Jolly Phonics, so she bought the DVD that came with the system. Once a day, she'd sit her daughter in front of it for 30 mins, which along with reading to her often, resulted in her being so good at reading that she surpassed all the other children in her class. (The nursery then stopped giving her reading homework a few months before the end of the school year and told her that if she kept reading she'd be in danger of stepping on the toes of the work she'd be doing in her next school year, another reason I don't like the school system, this clearly gifted child was kept back from reading more so she'd stay at the same level as the other, less advanced children in her class)

When I went online to find the DVD, I came across the entire teaching school pack that a school would buy to teach the children with. I figured that this would be much more comprehensive than just the DVD (and she wouldn't be going to school or nursery) so we got that instead.

In my opinion, it was excellent, easily laid out and a simple system to follow that was fun for her to learn from.

The teachers set is about £150 and available from - http://www.primaryclassroomresources.co.uk/teaching-resources/Jolly-Phonics-Starter-Kit_JL938.html

I've heard of other good learning systems like Explode The Code that are available in the US that you can try too.

From a very young age, all the children have had a love of reading and we'd read them at least 7-8 books a day, many of them they want us to read twice or more. As they get older, they want to pretend read the books themselves and then when they learn the letter sounds, we encourage them to read as many words in the stories as they can until they can read them much more independently.

We have stacks of books so they don't get bored of reading the same ones all the time and there's a post coming soon showing where we get all our book from (note: only about 10% of our books are bought brand new)

Apart from following the Jolly Phonics systems, the other things that really helped them learn to read were daily repetition of their letter sounds, bright visually beautiful and fun posters and flashcards, reading and phonics workbooks that your child works through, daily reading and  lots and lots of positive encouragement.

We also used a online learning program called Time 4 Learning which has lots of reading practice and sound recognition in there also.

Here's a snipet from the Jolly Phonics dvd we have, it's very olde English, but the children like it!



I can't stress how much positive encouragement and daily reading help the learning process of learning, so if nothing else, I'd recommend this.

Hatep Yasar

Mut

Our Nuwaupuyee of the week poster

Raahub Yasar,

To make learning new nuwaupuyee (our language) easier, the kharadu (children) and I made this little poster.

It's 4 pieces of black craft/sugar paper stuck together then decorated with ankhs. The words of the week are stuck on with tape that we carefully remove and replace with new words or sentences each week.

If you are teaching your kharadu or yourself, you may find it helpful to have something like this up so that you can see it very regularly. We have ours up in our living room, which is also the dining room and mir (school) room too, so we see it all the time. I aim to practice the words with them daily, just by getting them to look at them and we'll all say them out loud in Nuwaupuyee and english.

This picture is of last week's words, this week (commencing Mon 16th Oct 2012) our words are

Yakax - take
Safaf - see
Sawaf - look
radad - give
and the sentence - Panan zamam enen eahaw aalam nahaw... - today we will learn about ... ( I can use this every day during our mir studies several times and even get them to say it to me and let them teach me something :-)

Hatep yasar and be sure to subscribe to the blog by adding your email address in the box at the top right of the page and share with anyone you think would like it.

Mut Bast.tet En Re
(Leah Salmon)

Our Children's Daily Routine :-)

Raahub Yasar,

Sounds like my children's daily routine already!!!

Hatep Yasar, have a wonderful day

Mut 

(Leah Salmon) 

My Top 5 Free Educational Websites

Raahub Yasar

If you've ever been concerned that the cost of educational materials will be too much for you to teach your child at home, then fear not, as long as you can afford a printer and some ink, or a trip to the local library to print some things off once in a while then you're set. 

Quite a few homeschooling families fuel the majority of their curriculum with free resources and I'd say at least half 1/3 of the material we use are free too. 

These are the sites I've used most to get free lapbooks, lesson plans, ideas, activities, worksheets, coloring sheets etc over the years. Some of these have a free section and paid products, but the ones below are only recommended for their free resources, if the paid section is any good, I'll be listing them in another post I do on paid websites. 


1. Homeschool Share - http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Lapbooks_at_HSS.php
This site has lots of lapbook packs and book studies that make it very easy for you to teach a whole topic, they are straightforward to work out, but I'll blog about a lapbook is for those who don't soon.

2. First School - Mainly for preschoolers or those learning to read  http://www.first-school.ws/  
The layout and navigation of this site can be a little tricky, but once you find your way around, you'll find lots of printables to learn the alphabet and numbers mainly. 

3. Enchanted Learning  - http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html
This site is full of activities based on different themes, it's easy to use and search for different topics, which include free online puzzles.

4. Currclick - http://www.currclick.com/index.php?keywords=+&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=0&pto=0
This is the online hub of homeschool resources, most good homeschool product companies sell their products on this site and give away free versions of their products too.


5. Donna Young - http://donnayoung.org/index.htm
I used this site alot when I very first started homeschooling, I found a lot of tracing sheets and planners that were simple and effective.


By doing a quick google search, here are some others I've found


* Homeschool Freebie Of The Day - http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com - I'm on their mailing list where they send you a message on Sunday's telling you what free resources will be given out each day of the following week. I've used a few in our Mir. 

* Dads Worksheets - http://www.dadsworksheets.com - A very impressive site with over 7,000 free maths worksheets 

* Free Homeschool Resources - http://freehomeschoolresources.webs.com/ - This site also lists many other free resources


If you can recommend any other good free resources, please let me know by adding them to the comments section below

Remember to put your email address in the box in the top right of the page to get updated of new posts on the blog

Hatep yasar

Mut

Our Homeschool Day Plan For This Week

Raahub Yasar!!!

As I move towards a slightly more relaxed way of teaching, I tried out a new day scheduled that worked quite well last week, so I thought I'd share it with you this week.

Like most of my plan, they'll probably change after following it for  a few days but if it works as well as it did last week, it could be a keeper!



8:30 - Zamam (morning) warm drink, house work, snack (normally fruit, a smoothie or nut/seed milk or nuts and dates) and prayer & Chant

9:30 - Reading hour - We all sit down together, I read them a story each, then each of them read a story out loud to all of us, then they each read a book on their own, with plenty of discussion time sprinkled in.

11:00 - Water, Prepare and eat breakfast and then clean up

12:00 - Mir - maths, reading, writing, reasoning workbook and worksheets of their choice and as much or as little as they feel like doing (with plenty of encouragement, praise and support they'll always do more than enough, but still feel in control)

1:30 - Water and smoothie break

2:00 - Mir continued - more workbooks, works sheets, discussion time, special projects, lapbooks etc

2:45 -Water, Prayer & Chant, light lunch or snack and clear up

3:30 - Nuwaupic, art, craft, dance or music

4:30 -Water break then 1-2-1 time - I'll do an activity with just one of the kharadu while the others go off and play of work on the computer, this can be anything from making a salad, to and art project, to read a book together, sewing, playing hide and seek and something else they want to do)

5pm - Mir's finished for the day,

Learning will often continue with more reading before bed which could be stories, Paa Taraq or the Actual facts which will all involve some level of discussion, some more lengthy than others. We'll also play scrabble, cards games, Mind Bender or other educational games around bed time too.

If some things take longer than others on some days or some things even get missed out, it's no big deal, we just go with the flow, at the children's pace and do what we can see makes them happy, interested and stimulated.

If either of us need to take 5, that's ok too as there are typically plenty of things to get them to do while I have a breather and if one of them look bored, agitated and in need of a break, it gives me time to focus more on the others,

I hope you find this helpful and feel free to share your day plan if you have one too

Hatep yasar

Our Homeschool Supplies Lists & Cost

Raahub Yasar!

Even though the cost of homeschooling can be high, you can absolutely get by very well on a tight shoe string  budget. 

Today I wanted to share my homeschool supply list so you can work out what it will cost in terms of resources and costs to get started or to restock if you're already started. It's broken up into 

1) Learning materials 

2) Basic materials for everyday use

3) Equipment that's really useful 

4) fancy extra stuff.

These list are by no means exhaustive, just what comes to mind right now:

1) Learning Materials (some free, some paid for that I find useful, but just opitional)

A few work books on the subjects you want your children to learn (you can start with maths, spelling, reading, writing, phonics and a language or science

A good supply of reading books for the child's age and a few years above and preferably a library card to go and read different books ever so often

Links to a few free websites with learning activities

A subscription to an online learning system or a computer learning program to make learning a bit more interesting (and to get them familiar with using computers at the same time)

2) Basic materials for everyday use

Plain white paper 

Lined white paper 

Pencils

Colouring pens or pencils

Crayons

Sharpeners

Rubbers/Erasers

Rulers - 6inch, 12inch and 

Sticky tape

Glue sticks

Scissors

Coloured paper

Folders

3) Really Useful Equipment (some of which you may have in your home anyway)
Colour or black and white printer

Black  and Coloured printer ink

Laminator and pouches

Digital camera 

4) Fancy Extra Stuff

Glitter

Fancy art bits and bobs - Spangles, those shiny sparkly decoration that come in different colours, googly eyes, feathers, craft sticks etc

Paints and brushes

Tissue paper

Crepe paper

Playdough, plastercine (or ingredients to make your own)

Playdough cutters and tools (you can get set of playdough shape cutters, little rolling pins, rolling blades for cutting etc) 

String

Elastic bands

Cd player and cd's 

Musical instruments (preferably mainly wooden and cultural i.e. drums)

As far as costs are concerned, you can get started with 3 children for as little as £30 a month or spend up to £100 a month on 1 child if you include educational magazine subscriptions, private tutors and drama, dance and music classes. 

We probably spent £30 to get started (mainly on printer ink to print of lots of free worksheets, tracing sheets and coloring sheets, then paints, craft materials, pencils, colours etc), then maybe £40 a month thereafter, made up of £10 a week picking things up as we went along. 

Now I use an online learning program for the older 2 children now called Time 4 Learning which is about £25 a month and covers a lot of maths, science, language arts and language art extension which I like so in total we spend an average of £40 a month on all 4 children, not include the occassional trips and restocking workbooks 2-3 times a year. 

There are some months when we actually don't spend anything but the £25 online program fee and other months when I might go crazy and spend £60 or really fancy art supplies, brand new books gadgets and more. 

I'd love to hear what other homeschooling families are using and spending on their homeschool supplies, so please comment below. 

Remember to subscribe to the blog by adding your email address in the box above and share this with anyone you think would find it useful

Hatep yasar

Mut Bast.tet En Re