A Day With All About Reading

As you know from numerous other posts, we are in our 3rd (or is it 4th?) year of using All About Reading and All About Spelling.

When I'm researching a new curriculum option I like to see how other families are actually using the product.  Do they use it exactly as is?  Or do they tweak it to meet their needs?  

I tweak everything!!!  For one, Joseph does not fit into any box.  In some areas his skills are around grade level, yet in other areas he has substantial delays.  Homeschooling is the perfect solution to meeting his wide range of needs.

Today I'd like to share A Day With All About Reading.  

Joseph (Down syndrome, age 8) is working through Level 1.  Progress is slow, but consistent.  He's on lesson 16.  And we've been at this for well over a school year.  I spend a lot of time on the Fluency Practice pages and the word flashcards.  Let's say one lesson takes us 6 school days to complete, I still start each day with the green word flashcards.  It's become a habit and if I try to start instruction any other way, Joe gets grumpy and wants the fwashcards.  I also add in sight word reading lessons between each All About Reading lesson.

Most lessons have activity pages to go with, such as this one.  He just learned the /th/ sound and this activity page has him cut out and color (if desired) fried eggs, then place them in a pan and flip them to read.  I don't usually have Joe color the pages, but I thought it would be a good lesson in following directions and perseverance to have him use a highlighter to color in each yolk.  I gave him explicit directions to color in the entire yolk without getting any yolk on his egg white.  While he worked hard at this, I spent time reading books to Peter and Maria. 

I put three eggs at a time in the pan, he flipped them and read the /th/ word.  The activity pages in All About Reading are simple, fun, and effective practice.

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I have a super fun idea to get your kids to practice reading and develop fluency.

Whenever our niece comes to visit, she has a poem to read to us.  Her assignment is to read it and have people sign that they listened to her.  

Peter is also working through Level 1 - we just started some time in the late fall.  He's really good at reading the flashcards, but needs a lot of practice with fluency.  Every other lesson of All About Reading has the student read from the phonics reader.  One time through the story isn't enough.  He's pretty slow and choppy and the meaning of the story is lost.  So, I thought about our niece's assignment and adapted it to our homeschool.

I wrote the name of the story on the notecard and then numbered it 1-6.  I told him he had to read the story to 6 people and then I would give him a treat.  I purchased a giant bag of candy for him to pick from.

It's working like a dream.  The first time he reads the story I sign, so then he only has to get 5 other people to listen and sign, but he can't double up.  Each person to sign has to = a reading.

Emily's home on spring break - Peter's reading to her while she folds laundry.

Peter reads "The Sad Hog" to Maria.

Peter reads it again to Sam.

Here's a look at his notecard with signatures.  I purchased some chocolate, too, so next time Joseph has a phonics reader lesson I'll be using this fluency practice technique with him, too.

All About Reading has been a winner for our family.  Do you have questions about this or other levels?  Just ask in the comments.

All About Learning Press is always offering new and exciting free games and other learning activities.  Here's a fun one for practicing compound words.

Linking Up With

Educational Games

One child needed a little extra practice with identifying adjectives today.  I found this site with an array of educational games.  I liked the fact that it didn't require running any add-ons, but it is full of advertisements.  From what we saw, nothing offensive - satellite TV, makeup, airline tickets.  The adjective game is found in the English category.  I like doing online games because it gives the kids a chance to practice computer skills and discerning pertinent info from the unimportant info.  Sometimes kids get distracted by the advertising and don't know what they're really supposed to be reading at a particular site.  Anyway if you don't mind viewing an add before playing each game you might want to check out EZSchool.com

Grammar Woes

On the homeschooling front we've been just skipping along. Some weeks it can be drudgery, but some can be skippy. It's been pretty skippy here lately, well until now. Emily's working through Language of God Level E for middle school students. It's been a great fit for her allowing us to skip along at a nice pace, but today was a little different; she started on adverbs and the words they modify and adjectives and the words they modify. She did quite a bit with this last year and couldn't wait to complete the last page in May. So this year adjectives and the words they modify has been easily understood. However, adverbs is another thing. So we were doing the exercise together reading the sentences aloud with lots of emphasis on the subject and predicate and then softly saying the rest of the sentence except when I would forcefully enunciate the adverb. We did this a few times until she understood better and then I stopped the enunciating part and she would just pick out the words by herself. This worked great and we survived 26 sentences with multiple adverb/adjective/modifier combinations and still love one another. Yes! Keeping with her tradition she always looks ahead to tomorrows page letting me in on the fun we'll be having with grammar. Today she just laughed out loud when she read the next page's title

More Adjective-Adverb Confusion

Matter of fact the next 6 pages have that title which helps her to realize she's not the only one a bit confused. I always tell her the number of practice pages for a particular part of speech is directly proportionate to the number of kids (in millions) who need more practice. She usually turns away at the point, probably because I forbid her to roll her eyes at me. A tiny part of me thinks she might be rolling them, though, when she turns away.

On Poetry and Atlases

In our normal school schedule this week lined up as an off week. However, with field trips, quilting days and turkey hunting next week I opted to do something a little different and actually have school this week. Grace and Lee are focusing on Language Arts and Map Skills. So this week has been a little more intense concerning those two subjects. The kids are excited to move through the lessons and be that much closer to the finish line, however, it entails some pretty in depth work in some areas.

Today was one of those in depth days. Grace had to write poetry, probably her least favorite thing in the world to do. The word poetry brings her to a panic, whether it be reading, reciting, memorizing or writing. First she had to write poetry based on opposites starting with morning and ending with night. Then she made one up about horses starting with take the horse out and ending with put the horse back in. Things were going smoothly until she was instructed to write a 4-6 line rhyming poem. Her negative vibes were so intense I found myself actually sweating as she scribbled unrelated misspelled rhyming words onto a torn piece of looseleaf. I asked her to take her negativity elsewhere. So she took it about four feet away and huffed and sighed as she wrote. Well after we both calmed down and I directed her to a few children's books of poetry and coaxed her into writing, this is the finished product.

Her pants are blue
and so are you.
Her shirt is yellow
makes me think of lemon jello.
Her shoes were blue and white
her smile so bright,
made me think of golden light.

Not Dickinson or Poe, but we were both happy with the outcome, so much so that she actually plans on reading it to dad at supper.

Next up... Atlas work. Pair a serious, perfectionist, extremely literal nine year old boy with a Map Skills workbook and Scholastic Atlas and the outcome.....? Well, let's just say I wouldn't want to repeat this day. Of course the workbook only wants him to color in 5 general climate zones for the U.S. and the atlas includes 12 different climate zones. The workbook calls it a Land Use map, the atlas, an Economic Industry map. Too many discrepancies, too many countries to look up in the Index, too many everything, according to him. But now the work is done and he is in total glory trapping muskrats.