Kindergarten

After a year of life change, our family is finally settled again in a new wonderful house, and just in time to start kindergarten! I have been keeping some updates on our family blog, but to quickly summarize, a year ago we moved from North Carolina to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to do a YWAM Fire & Fragrance Discipleship Training School here. We completed three months of lectures and three months of outreach, (which we spent in Nepal as well as quick visits to Dubai and Northern Ireland!) Then we moved into a house across the road from the ministry base in Harrisburg in the inner city. We spent the summer there and began establishing our family here in Harrisburg, as we have felt called to stay and serve in the missions community here. This past month, however, God provided a new opportunity through our amazing church here in Harrisburg, to live in a house belonging to the church (and just next door to it) managing it as a community house for people committed to filling night watch hours at the prayer room. We also had a new baby in August, our first little boy! Norah turned five last week, the week after we moved in to our new house. So we are in a new house, with a new baby, and our lives are full with family, church, YWAM ministry, and lots of amazing friends and amazing things with the Lord. It's been crazy busy but wonderful.

So Norah's pre-K year didn't look very typical, but it included intense spiritual training, traveling to two other continents and three other countries, visiting the White House, meeting SO many people, learning all about worship and the Holy Spirit and prayer, living in the inner city, sharing Jesus and praying for healing, making friends with missionary kids and kids from other cultures, learning about other cultures and languages, becoming close to so many new adopted, godly aunts and uncles, and so much more.  Our traveling has also provided more visits with grandparents which has been such a blessing. Norah also became a big sister again and has been amazing with both her little siblings. Elyse has blossomed as well. She is so verbal, friendly, independent, and spirited. She definitely carries heaven! She is the picture of life and freedom. Norah is full of wisdom, insight, and love for Jesus. They are just amazing little girls. This past year has been intense for them with the moving around, traveling, and lots of new beginnings. But they have been incredible and I'm glad to say they are better little people as a result.

However, we are so excited now to put our feet down in this new, exciting season. Really God's timing is perfect (of course) and we have been able to wait to start kindergarten at just the right time - waiting till after the baby was born and we were settled in the house and she turned five. Our church has a bimonthly co-op that will be a great asset, and most of Norah's little friends are homeschooled too.  We started that about two weeks ago, and today had our official first day of school at home.

I don't yet have all the curriculum I'm planning to use, but I had enough to get started. We had tried to keep up with reading over the past year, and, although she is really getting it, I decided to start again with Kindergarten level Hooked on Phonics and make sure we really nail all the basics. The daily lesson consists of a short DVD lesson on a new sound (today's was -at), then a workbook to practice reading the new words, and finally a short story she can read using the new words she's learned. She already knew the -at words but I knew that would make her feel more excited since she'd feel like it was manageable for her. She loved putting the star sticker at the end of her lesson. Elyse enjoyed watching the video too! I did give Elyse a box of wooden ABC puzzle letters to play with. We sang the ABC song several times with her too.

Norah also started her Handwriting without Tears workbook. I didn't buy the rest of the program, just the workbook. I can tell I'm missing a few of the teacher prompts, but I didn't think I needed the rest because she is already writing all her letters and numbers. I just wanted to get the workbook to make sure she really gets it, as I know there's a few letters she is forming incorrectly. As with reading and math, I'm going a bit beneath her level to ensure she learns it all correctly. We also have a year margin as she is not required to start kindergarten, technically, till next year. So I'm using the space to her benefit. No need to rush her, even though she is so bright and I know she'll move along quickly.

I haven't ordered her math curriculum yet, but I decided we would first finish the kindergarten math workbook I bought at Target last spring. We've been slowly working through it, and she's already worked on writing numbers 1-12, simple addition and subtraction, shapes, and patterns. Today we did a couple pages learning cubes and spheres. Then we found toys that were shaped like cubes and spheres.

We read some library books in place of history curriculum, which I haven't ordered yet. We read one on Picasso, and she learned about "The Girl with a Ponytail." Then she drew her own girl with a ponytail. So fun and so cute!

I'm so excited about this year!

Starting Reading

Our family is about to undergo a whole lot of changes (see here) so things are a bit topsy turvy here lately. However, in the midst of it, Norah and I began our reading lessons. Preschool will most definitely still be going on, but it will be a bit different than I imagined for the next few months. It may be a combination of Grandma helping out, reading together at bedtime, and the lessons that will come from learning new places, making new friends, and of course overseas travel. (Check the link so you can find out what I'm talking about!!)

But reading. I've been studying up on how to teach it, it really intimidated me. But, although I still have lots to learn, I'm realizing, just like everything with raising and teaching children, it's a lot more common sense than I thought. I found an excellent series of posts from a lady who shared how she started reading lessons with her four year old, following the Charlotte Mason pattern. These posts were so helpful to me, and basically what I started practicing with Norah. 

It's basically a mix of phonics and memorization/sight words. She's still young (turning four next month) so we're going really slowly. We started with a sentence in a book that had become really familiar to her (she knew the sentence by heart). Then I wrote each word on a card, cut them out, and had her play with the words - put them in order, mix them up and identify them, etc. Then we practice frequently with that sentence. You have to check the Charlotte Mason blog above - she gives step by step exactly how to use this method. With the phonics lessons too, we followed the steps from the blog. Basically we took magnetic letters and spelled "at." Then we practiced putting initial consonants on to "at" - c, f, r, s, etc. So for the next while, I think the lessons will continue this way: a mix of memorizing/learning words by sight, and learning the rules of phonics and word families. We're mostly using the books we're reading together, and whenever we come across familiar words I'm having her read them herself. I also try to have her hunt for the words she knows in the text. 

I can tell a lot of it is just her memorizing, but that's ok. That's so much of what reading is anyway. But we're taking it slow, and we'll continue practicing the phonics a lot. I have some other phonics books and games around the house that we'll incorporate too.

Trying out our New Skills

Today I was excited to try some of the new things I'd learned about teaching phonemic awareness and math. We started this morning just reading a short passage from Mark 1 from the NLT. I really want to be diligent with reading Scripture with Norah, and finding verses to memorize too.

Next we tried a few of the phonemic awareness activities. I asked her to clap to each sound of a sentence with me. She caught on to this right away, and even made up her own sentences to clap and did really well dividing the sounds. I wasn't sure she'd know what a "sentence" was but she figured it out right away and was really creative thinking of sentences. 

Then we tried an activity for blending syllables. For example, I said a word like "Bas - ket- ball" slowly and she had to say clearly the word I had said. This was easy for her. 

We also segmented syllables, and she had to clap to each syllable in a word. Again, easy for her.

Next we tried deleting syllables. This is where we rested for the day. It was more challenging. She seemed to understand generally  but definitely needs to practice. I was really impressed with her overall understanding though, because the things I was asking her were difficult. For this activity I would say a word like "Sunday" and then ask her to say the word without a syllable, such as without "Sun." She didn't understand at first what I meant. I sang her the "BINGO" song to show her how to leave out letters or parts of a word. Then I made up a song to the same tune using a longer word, like "Ladybug." Each time I sang it I clapped for a missing syllable. She started to understand a little better. She made it more complicated too by suggesting we try the word "zoo" and take off the "z." This is where I am trying to steer her, to where she understands the individual letter sounds blend to make words. 

Then we took out her wooden letters (pieces from a letter puzzle) and I asked her to find the letters of her name. She did really well with this and only needed a little direction from me. I also asked her which letters had straight or curvy lines (an idea from Reading Resource). I had her then practice writing her name. While she started putting her letters away, I was thinking about what to do next for some numbers, but she chose our next activity instead by noticing that her letters came in a few different colors. She started grouping the letters by color (of course, she loves to organize anything). That gave me an idea to have her count the letters in each group. Then I also thought she could make a simple graph to chart how many letters in each color. That gave us the chance to then practice writing numbers and looking at which groups had more, less, or the same. We had fun exploring all of that. We will definitely keep practicing writing the numbers and working on more and less. We had so much fun though and it was so easy to find an activity just with a few simple tools.

Norah made towers with the letters afterwards, and this helped her visualize
which group had more or less. She said, "Lots make higher, Mama!" 

Elyse joined us for some puzzles after her nap

Outside time

Sister-music time:)

Playful Math

I checked out an Usborne book from the library that had plenty of simple ideas for teaching math skills in the early years through play. I mostly was interested to find out what math skills I need to focus on with Norah through preschool. I was pleasantly surprised to find that she has encountered many of these ideas just through our daily lives. The book has lots of great activities, most are common sense, but I made a list of some that I thought would be easy for us to implement at home. Many of them Elyse can join in with us too. I thought I'd start choosing an activity or two each day to incorporate into our school.

1. Starting to Count
1. One to one correspondence
2. Pair objects
3. Sets
4. Real life counting
5. Patterns
6. Reading numbers
7. Number Bingo
8. Dot-to-Dots
9. Simple Board Games
10. Writing Numbers
11. Play shop
12. Ordinal Numbers
2. Shape & Space
1. Use position words
2. Do treasure hunts using position words
3. Simon Says
4. Blocks, legos, shape sorters, puzzles
5. Use shape names when possible
6. Cut out shapes
7. Playdough shapes
8. Print/Stamps
9. Shapes I Spy
10. Put shapes in a feely bag, guess which shapes 
11. Use recyclables to make a craft
12. Symmetry
3. Sorting 
1. Sort and organize items (Norah loves to do this on her own)
4. Patterns
1. Notice patterns, especially in nature
2. Do pattern rubbings
3. Draw simple patterns
4. Paper cutting patterns
5. Threading Toys/Beads
6. Blocks
7. Musical rhythms
5. Ordering/Sequencing
1. Nesting dolls, stacking rings
2. Lay out number cards or dominoes in order from 1-5 and have her choose which number is missing
6. Adding/Subtracting
1. Lots of real life/real object examples
2. Use fingers, especially for common number bonds (i.e. 3 and 7 make 10)
7. Measuring
1. Taller, shorter, longer
2. Cooking
3. Heavier, lighter
4. Volume, capacity (sand and water play, which we do daily)
5. Estimating - is this enough?
8. Time
1. Calendar, daily schedule
2. Starting to use a clock

The book went on to multiplication and division, but obviously that won't be for a while. Though many of these math skills we already encounter in normal life, this list gives me many good ideas to draw from to keep guiding Norah in math. I was reading about Classical Conversations a while ago, and saw that they don't do any formal math instruction till much later, (around age 10 I think?) The reason is that so much of early math can be taught through play, real life, and informal instruction. As someone who had a difficult relationship with math textbooks, and who has tutored many kids struggling with basic math, I'm excited about seeing number skills being incorporated into daily life in a pleasant way.

Teaching Reading

I did some reading yesterday on a site called  Reading Resource.  It has so much information on the most important elements in teaching reading. I got a lot of great ideas from it for assessing what level Norah is on with her reading, as well as how to move forward. She knows letters and sounds, but she doesn't seem ready to me yet to put them together into words. I often think, I wish I could just find a how-to book on teaching reading, and this site seems pretty close! 

Reading Resource listed the "Five Big Ideas in Reading":

1. Phonemic Awareness - hearing/manipulating the sounds in words
2. Alphabetic Principle - associating sounds with letters and understanding that these sounds form words
3. Reading Fluency - reading as if speaking. Comes before comprehension.
4. Vocabulary - the key to gaining vocabulary is parents' reading aloud to children!
5. Comprehension - the only reason for reading. The ultimate goal in reading.

The site has checklists and assessments for each of the five big ideas. They also have plenty of activity ideas for each. Norah obviously would be at the Phonemic Awareness and Alphabetic Principle levels, so I wrote down several ideas from the site for both of those. 

Phonemic Awareness Checklist (from Reading Resource)

1. Can hear rhymes
2. Can produce rhymes
3. Can blend syllables
4. Can segment syllables
5. Can delete compounds and syllables
6. Can isolate initial sounds
7. Can isolate final sounds
8. Can blend sounds (onset + rime. Onset is the part of the word before the vowel, the rime is the vowel and ending)
9. Can blend all sounds
10. Can segment sounds
11. Can delete sounds
12. Can substitute compounds and syllables
13. Can substitute sounds

They list many activities for each of these skills. Norah checked off right away for hearing and producing rhymes, she's been doing that on her own for a long time just from singing and reading nursery rhymes together. She loves to make up her own rhymes or play rhyming games with us. But I wasn't sure of her abilities for the rest of the checklist. So my next goal was to start working through the activities with her.

Alphabetic Principle

1. Alphabet
2. Letter sounds
3. Letter formation

Norah knows her alphabet and almost all the letter sounds. We've been practicing those for years now. Plus watching Sesame Street. So we're mostly good there. Handwriting is another thing though. She enjoys it but isn't developmentally ready for all of it. We're taking our time practicing. It's another thing I'm trying to learn more about how to teach. Reading Resource had a few ideas of games and activities for reviewing letters and handwriting. 

Impressing Daddy

My mom got Norah this puzzle awhile ago, so I put it into her "school" box to pull out for some shapes and thinking/pre-math practice. There are several shapes that the child has to rearrange to complete puzzles on 18 cards that get progressively harder. The other day, on Andy's day off, I left her with her puzzles at the table so I could go get ready  to go out, and Andy stayed with her. He came to find me a few minutes later, so impressed, asking if I'd ever seen her do these puzzles. He then kept coming back to show me each card she had completed. I had seen her do it all before, but I pretended I was super impressed. :) It was really cool to see his reaction to what she's learned. I'll have to make a point to keep him really involved in what the girls are learning.

Summer Preschool

Norah and I spent a few days working on preschool things this week. I put together a box of materials we can keep handy for quick lessons. When Elyse takes her morning nap, we spend a little while on some of those activities, and/or we just read library books together. I always try to prioritize reading together. But now that she's getting closer to 4, I am getting a little more focused about teaching reading, writing, and some math skills.

Norah reminded me about the reading books we'd been using before. I'd actually put it away. I often will start something, then get nervous that maybe it's not working, and look for something else. Not good. So I'm glad she showed interest. We pulled it out this week and worked through a few of the lessons.

She's doing really well with remembering the sounds the letters make. The book makes a big emphasis on rhyming. For example, you tell the child you're going to rhyme with "-at" and start with the "r" sound or the "s" sound. Then the child tries. The other main emphasis is phonics, which I like. However, the letters are first introduced in different forms, to differentiate the sounds they make. Apparently later in the book this differentiation will be phased out. I feel a little unsure of this because I know letters don't look that way in real reading, but if it gets her started and will help her in the beginning, it might be ok. Until I get the other book (The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading), we'll keep up with this one.

Norah's starting to read some of the basic words - such as "see" or "me." The way the book introduces the words is to have the child sound out each letter slowly, then say the word fast. But she is still pausing between each sound. I'm not sure she understands the flow yet.

I've been a bit hesitant to start handwriting yet. But she really enjoys tracing letters, so we did some of that. I think she's a lot closer now to being able to write. I picked up an old book (The Bausell Home Learning Guide) at the library that has a good order for introducing the letters, so next week I'll work on that with her. Their suggested order for teaching writing the letters is:

Oo, Tt, Ll, Ii, Ff, Ee, Mm, Hh, Nn, Aa, Vv, Ww, Zz, Yy, Kk, Bb, Dd, Jj, Pp, Rr, Cc, Gg, Uu, Qq, Ss, Xx

What I've noticed is that on her own, many of her letters are very big. When I told her to write between the lines, she struggled to do that. She's young so I don't want to press it too much. But the guidelines in this book should help me direct her. 

I also haven't tried too many workbooks with her yet. A few months ago I had shown some to her, and she didn't really like it. But I tried again this week and she really enjoyed it. She wanted to do several pages. We mostly worked on math concepts - numbers, counting, grouping, shapes. She has a really good grasp on most of the concepts. The main things she struggled with were writing the numbers (because we hadn't worked on that yet) and confusing a square and a rectangle. A little more practice and she'll get those.

Tracing letters in a dry erase book

Elyse joined in for some puzzle fun after she woke up