Starting Oak Meadow Kindergarten with Tom Thumb

Back when I was in my Waldorf phase, I bought on eBay a vintage 1993 set of Oak Meadow Kindergarten curricula (here's a link to their current kindergarten offerings).  I used it in its entirety with Red the year she was four and we really enjoyed it so I dusted it off this week for Tom Thumb.  Although Oak Meadow is not considered "real Waldorf" by Waldorf purists (if you want "real Waldorf", look here or here), it has all the things I liked about the educational philosophy while still leaning mainstream.  The beauty of this curriculum is its simplicity and gentle pace.  For example, here's what they want you to do for language arts for week 1:


-Tell the story of The Magic Spindle to your child from the Fairy Tale book.
-Ask your child to use crayons to draw a picture of a haystack and the letter A in his main lesson book.
-Ask your child to make the letter A in beeswax.
-Help your child gather sticks and tie them in bundles to form an A.
-Ask your child to draw the letter A with a stick in the dirt.
-Help your child find tree branches that fork.  Tie a piece of yarn between the forks to form the letter A.  Find many branches and make many As.
-Teach your child the tongue twister "My Dame."


There are also short fun activities for mathematics, science, art and music.  I'm sure most kids could get all the activities done in one day and all in one shot if you let them.  The idea is to stretch it out and really let it sink in, not to mention have fun!


Tom Thumb has never been an artsy kid.  Red was always using crayons as a preschooler and got in trouble more than once for "decorating" her bedroom furniture.  Tom Thumb, on the other hand, has never shown any interest in drawing.  Even when I've offered to do it with him, he declines.  I was really proud of him yesterday when he gave it a try.  We've read The Magic Spindle three times already this week (he likes it that much!) so I asked him if he wanted to try to draw a picture of the spindle in the haystack with me.  That picture is supposed to resemble a letter A.  Here's the sample I drew back a couple of years ago when I was doing the curriculum with Red:

Tom Thumb picked up his crayons and with a little coaxing he produced his own drawing:

It was nice to see him give something he's not particularly fond of a try.

Then, of course, he was back to doing what he does love:

We're still plugging away at The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.  When I started this book with Red, she was three months shy of being 5 years old.  Tom Thumb just turned 4 in September.  We started sooner so we're going at a much slower pace and my expectations are set right this time.  Doing this book at times was frustrating with Red because my expectations were all wrong.  I thought we could get a lesson completed every day.  That was completely unrealistic.  My goal this time around is 1/3 of lesson per day or finishing one or two lessons each week.  For the 4 year old with a short attention span, this seems to be the sweet spot.  Here's an example of the amount we might get done at one time.  This picture shows the second page of lesson #46.  This is equal to about 1/3 of a daily lesson:

Slow and steady wins the race, right?  

I'm hopeful that we'll be on target to complete the book in June 2013, right before Tom Thumb enters 1st grade.  My mom-in-law arrives tomorrow for a week long holiday visit.  I'm off to do battle with some dirt! :-)

A new reading practice plan for Red

First grade has turned out to be much more intense than I anticipated.  I really don't remember it being this crazy when I was 6!  Red has homework nearly every night.  In addition, her teacher has requested that she read to me 15-20 minutes each evening.  Before we were only doing read alouds at bedtime.  With everything we already have going on, what's a mama to do?


I finally figured out what we're going to try and we gave it a shot for the first time last night.  I picked out two books for her at the library this week that are at her reading level.  I gave her the choice of Catwings or Sarah Plain and Tall.  She chose Catwings and read me a chapter last night.  I asked her some quick comprehension questions about the story (i.e. What's the name of the kittens' mom?  What's different about the kittens?  Why does their mother want them to leave the neighborhood?).  Then I read her a chapter of Princess Academy, the new read aloud chapter book we just started.  I'm hopeful that this new reading plan will work for us and help her reading improve even more.  


What do you do for reading practice at your house?

Learning to read with Tom Thumb

Recently, Tom Thumb expressed a desire to learn how to read.  Not really knowing where he was at in terms of knowing his letter sounds, I whipped out my favorite reading program The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.  The first 26 lessons are about teaching all the vowel and consonant sounds.  I decided instead of doing the lessons I'd see what he knew already by asking him.  Amazingly, Tom Thumb knew all the letter sounds, with the exception of a strange pronunciation of the letter H (when he sees the letter H he says "hill."  I don't get it either).  Because of that, I skipped those lessons and started right in with him on lesson 27.  I figure we'll resolve the "hill" problem as we go along.


In the last week, we've been working through the lessons in the book for 5-10 minutes just before his nap and he seems to be progressing well.  I don't have any expectations for how fast we'll complete a lesson or how long we'll do it per day so it has been really relaxed.  Today we finished up lesson 35 and went on to lesson 36 which covers S sounds like /z/: is, his, as, and has.  I'm hopeful that this program will work as well for him as it did for Red!

Reading A Tale of Two Cities

I am currently reading this book for my book club which will meet on Wednesday, April 13th.  It's my own fault because I was the idiot (yes, IDIOT) who said, "Why don't we try some Dickens?"  On a discussion forum, I found this quote from a poster called spookymulder93 under the question "Is it normal having difficulty reading A Tale of Two Cities?"


This has got to be the hardest book I've attempted to read. 

I'm at chapter 3 now and from what I understand Both France and England have there problems and there are 3 dudes in a "mail" which I assume is some sort of horse drawn carriage who are going to Dover. Some dude shows up on horse back to deliver a message and the message he gets back confuses him. 

Am I on the right track? I plan on re-reading the chapters before I go to sleep tonight and now I have the convenience of having a dictionary at my side.

The opening line of the book is pretty good.




Well Spookymulder93, you have understood more than I have so far, dude.  My vocabulary is getting better everyday though.  Because I too have to read this book with a dictionary by my side, I now know the meaning of both blunderbuss and incommodiousness.  Don't you wish you knew too?  Ha ha.  Want to take bets on whether or not I'll finish the book?  I'm currently on page 66 out of 397.  I'm putting $20 on me.  :-)

Off to Narnia...

Lisbeth Salander is the Cure to Elizabeth Gilbert

I found this article fascinating (and humorous!) since I've read and liked both books.  Enjoy!

We started First Language Lessons

I read on the Well Trained Mind forum here that a good time to start First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind (FLL) is once you've completed lesson 140 in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (OPGTR) (if you haven't heard me rave yet, this book is worth its weight in gold!)  Red finished that lesson recently so we started in with the first lesson in FLL.  The lesson was easy--- learning the simple definition of a noun.  While it was not exactly inspiring, I'm confident that working our way through this book will give her a good foundation in grammar and writing.  I have the older edition that covers grades 1 and 2 in the same book so we'll take our time and work through it SLOWLY.

Red has also taken a sudden interest in finishing OPGTR.  I think it may have something to do with the improvement of her reading skills*.  It's almost as if overnight something clicked and she can read well.  She went from doing maybe one lesson a couple of times a week with me asking her to her asking me to do four or five lessons per day.  We're at around lesson 160 out of 231 and gaining fast.  In fact, yesterday morning before school she casually mentioned that she might want to bring a chapter book to school for stamina (this is a period during class in which everyone silent reads).  When I asked her if she wanted to bring one with her today, she said, "I don't need to.  I told my teacher yesterday that I know how to read chapter books, and I asked if she could get me one to read during stamina.  She told me she would have one for me today."  I was so proud of her!

On a separate note, one of my friends asked me recently why I'm going through all this work on her education when I'm sending her to school and not sure if we'll be homeschooling again in the future.  The answer to that question is I want to know what she knows.  I never want to be at a point when I don't where she's at grade level.  That way if at any point during her academic career we decide to home school again (even if it's this year), I will know right where to pick up. I've spent a lot of time this year working on reading with her.  As her skills improve, I want to spend more time on writing and math.  We're getting close to being done with the kindergarten read alouds I planned so I'm going to begin working on the grade 1 plans soon.  I also want to get a firmer hold what I'm doing with Tom Thumb.  It's not like I have any major plans here (come on---the kid is 3!), but I do want to have some read alouds, art projects, etc. planned for him as well.  I'll post how the planning is going soon!



*It may also have something to do with the fact that a long time ago (and I mean MONTHS ago)I mentioned that when we finished the book we could go to Chuck E. Cheese.  We have the same deal with when she learns how to swim by herself without a noodle.  I may be seeing a lot of Chuck in the near future.

Coming up on Lesson 100 in OPGTR!

Yesterday we finished lesson 98 in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, which was about the long O sound of OA .  I feel really strongly that reading is the most important thing Red should be doing academically right now.  Since she is going to 1/2 day afternoon kindergarten five days a week, we have dropped doing math and writing at home (except for practice work that is sent home by her teacher).  We have continued plugging away at OPGTR for about 15 minute per day.  Although she doesn't come to the lesson enthusiastically everyday, we are making progress and she's fighting me about it less and less.  There are 231 lessons so I'm hoping we finish it by the end of her kindergarten year. 

I really can't say enough good things about that book!  What I love is that it systemically teaches phonics in an order that makes sense and is easy to understand.  The only bummer is that so many "easy reader" books that are out there depend on the child's ability to memorize sight words in order to read the book.  My plan right now is to keep working away at OPGTR, and then when we finish it to have her start reading to me 10 minutes per day from a book of her choice.  Currently, Red has no interest in reading aloud to me.  She will do so when asked, but not of her own choosing.  On the other hand, she will sit there and listen to me read all day.  Today she stayed home from school because she was feeling ill.  She took a two hour nap this afternoon (she napped?!?!  That's when I definitely knew she was sick).  She watched some television, but over the course of the day I must have read aloud to her for about three hours.  We finished reading Charlotte's Web (what an outstanding book!  I can't wait to read it to Tom Thumb when he's older), we read a whole bunch of Mr. Putter and Tabby books including this one (love 'em!), and started Twenty and Ten.

School overall is going well.  I signed on with another mother to be co-room parents.  Our duties are to plan crafts and activities when there are holiday parties at school.  Red can't wait to go to school everyday.  She's only had to sit at the "peace table" (AKA the naughty spot) twice so far---yay!  My only complaint is that the teachers haven't really hit their stride as far as organization goes yet, but I think once they get that all worked out it should be fine.  One thing I really like is the "Friday Folder".  Every Friday Red brings home a folder in which the teacher includes comments about what she's working on currently and her behavior.  It's nice to have some sense of what's going on on a week to week basis and not just hearing about it at parent/teacher conferences--- which by the way are coming up around Thanksgiving.

Tomorrow the kids start back to swim class.  Tom Thumb will be a Tadpole (the first level after Parent Tot classes) and Red will be a Sunfish (her first time in the lap pool learning how to do the crawl).  While Tom Thumb can't wait to go tomorrow, Red is very scared about not being able to touch the bottom of the lap pool.  There's no shallow part.  The shallowest area is about 4.5 to 5 feet deep.  It's just shallow enough for me to have my shoulders above the water and I'm 5' 11".  Red is only 41" tall.  Our regular babysitter Colleen who is also a lifeguard there is going to meet us a few minutes early so she can help Red get acclimated to the lap pool before her teacher takes over.  Luckily, the teacher is Colleen's boyfriend so we already know him.  I hope that helps matters.  We'll see how it goes.  Fingers are crossed that there's not too much crying.

Reading to her little brother...

Doing the happy dance!

I keep on posting about how great things are going because I want to remember these times for when things are little more difficult and I need encouragement.  So...with that...
She read Green Eggs and Ham today FLUENTLY, with hardly any assistance from me.
 I could have burst with joy!

She read an ENTIRE BOOK!

I am just beside myself.  Red read an entire book today!  Yay!  Granted, I was on hand to assist with the more difficult words, but she did it.  We ended up reading almost every book in the library bag today (and it's a BIG bag.  See the number of books on the Read Aloud page with a completion date of today.  And that's not all that we read!  We read a big chunk of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh too.) because Tom Thumb was being a turkey this morning and I pulled a muscle in my back while wrestling him into time out. Thus, we couldn't go anywhere, which ended up being okay because we were under a tornado warning most of the afternoon. Thus, lots of book reading. 

I had checked out the Dr. Seuss book Fox in Socks at the library this past week.  Red brought it to me and asked me to read it.  I told her, "You know these words.  Why don't you read it?  I'll help if you get stuck."  It's a pretty sizeable book for an easy reader.  It took us quite a while --- maybe 15-20 minutes to read the whole thing with pauses to figure out unfamiliar words.  She's on around lesson 80 in OPGTR so she hasn't had lessons about "ee" or "-ough" or "ea" or "ew" or "ow" so we had to stop and learn some phonics rules as we went along.  The last few pages were a struggle because she was a little weary, but she wanted to finish so we plowed though and did it. 

Daddy was so proud that he suggested a Dairy Queen run as a treat so that's what we did.  Cones with sprinkles all around!

Slowing down for summer

You can tell it's getting to be warm outside because we've been slowing down a bit with the lessons.  We're still reading at the speed of light because Red has been sick the past few days.  We finished The Boxcar Children in a flash and every other book in the library bag!  I think we'll probably read some of the other Boxcar Children stories at some point.  Right now we have The Red Fairy Book on hold at the library so that will probably be our next long term read aloud.

Reading lessons are finally going well.  We're at around Lesson 70 now in the Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading which is reviewing long vowels made by adding a silent E to the end.  There's no review during these lessons.  You're just supposed to focus on whether or not the child is getting that concept.  Thank goodness she seems to be getting it--- yay!  We're going at about two lessons per week in terms of pace and that seems to be working out just about perfect for her.  By the way --- I have firmly decided that My Little Pony puffy stickers can work miracles!  After we complete a lesson, she gets one (or two) and that seems to be a great motivator.

We're doing 1-2 lessons per week from Rightstart Level A.  There are some things she's getting (entering numbers on the abacus) and some things that she's not (combining two sets of tally sticks into one number), but we're definitely making progress.  We're up to Lesson 13 and I'm feeling pretty confident.

Then, there's writing.  I have to just keep telling myself that she is young and her fine motor skills aren't there yet.  Her grip (unless she's reminded to hold her pencil "like a princess") looks like a mangled claw, and counter clockwise circles (which are the building block of a lot of lower case letters) do not come naturally to her at all.  She doesn't like practicing writing either so I only make her do a couple of examples of each thing we're working on, which usually end up not looking very pretty.  I know we'll get there.  She's only turning 5 in a few weeks.  I know I need to take it easy and not worry about it.

And finally---I need to schedule time to do the things we really want to do together, like art, crafts, baking and games.  As we get into the summer months, I foresee us doing a lot outside.  I think one craft we're going to tackle is to make little markers for our herb garden that we're working on.  Last year we kept all our herbs in pots.  This year we're prepping an area to put them all in the ground.  I think it would be a lot of fun to paint either rocks or signs with the names of the herbs. 

Most importantly, I hope she's well tomorrow.  I'm finally well.  I want everyone else to be healthy too.  Crossing my fingers and saying a prayer...

Reading Eggs

We're currently on a trial basis with http://www.readingeggs.com/ and Red LOVES it.  It seems to be a step up from http://www.starfall.com/ in that it doesn't allow you to have every word read to you.  She likes earning the eggs to buy things for her avatar (in her case, it's a fish with sunglasses wearing a cape).  She wants her next purchase to be a "gas blower" (i.e. a lava lamp)--- ha ha! 

We're four days into the new schedule and it seems to be going really well.  Today is supposed to be HS group/outing/game day.  Since I had my procedure with the doc today (it went well) not much happened until around 4PM when I was finally up and around.  She and I played Can Do Kangaroo and had a grand time until it was time for dinner.  Tomorrow is supposed to be Craft Day.  She wants to make chess pieces out of stuff you find outside.  She found it in a nature craft book we have out from the library.  And no, she does not know how to play chess.  This ought to be interesting...

Big improvement today...

We spent this morning with our homeschooling group at the park.  Another gorgeous day!  Red and Tom Thumb frolicked with the other kids on this giant play structure.  I think lil' Tom went non-stop for about two hours! 

When we got home, Red and I did a 15 minute only reading session and she breezed through both the lessons she struggled with during the frustrating 30 minute marathon yesterday.  This was definitely confirmation to me that sticking with the 15 minute lessons is the best bet in terms of keeping her attention.

We probably were outside today for about three hours again.  Not bad for a bunch of rookies trying to get back in the being outside game after being cooped up inside for 4 or 5 months.  After dinner we went to a skating exhibition at the rink.  Red was thrilled to watched the synchronized teams.  Tom Thumb was more interested in the zamboni.  Typical boy :-)

The Cobbler's off work tomorrow so hopefully we'll have another fun day.

We made it nearly 3 hours!

Yesterday was so deliciously warm (yay!) Red and I were outside from about 1-3PM while Tom Thumb was taking his nap.  We spent sometime swinging on the neighborhood communal swing set.  Then she jumped on the ever popular dead willow tree for a while.  Then she proceeded to lose one of my rings (just an old silver pinkie ring) inside said tree.  Luckily, we were able to retrieve it.  We raked our yard for a while.  Little did we know that we weren't supposed to do that since it had just been fertilized the day before.  Oops!  She also played outside for about a 1/2 hour while I was making dinner.  Then, Tom got up and we played for another 1/2 hour while waiting for the Cobbler to get home from work.  Overall, a successful day in terms of outdoor time.  We're moving in the right direction for sure.  Four to six hours, here we come!

On an unsuccessful note (well, I guess it's not unsuccessful, it's just I learned a valuable lesson), I pushed little Red too hard on her reading lesson.  I was trying to do the two review, one new method and it ended up going way too long and definitely beyond keeping her full attention.  It dragged on for about a 1/2 hour when I would like to keep it at 15 minutes.  It ended up being frustrating for both of us.  Lesson learned.  From now on I set a timer when we start.