Talk about a supportive husband!

I told Shawn about my decision today to go with Spell to Write and Read when he got home from work. Mind you, he had already "suggested" that I go with Spell to Write and Read based on what I told him months ago. He humors me. Anyway, he really wants EVERYTHING in place for our 1 June start date, so he authorized the purchase. Yipee!! Now, all I have left to buy is our math program and we are set!!

Language Arts

Whew...I finally made a decision on a language arts program. I've been agonizing over this for months. I've decided to go with Wanda Sanseri's Spell to Write and Read. This was a tough decision since I've been planning on using Romalda Spalding's The Writing Road to Reading since Daniel was only a couple of months old.

The two programs are very similar, but it is my opinion (at this moment) that Spell to Write and Read (SWR) is easier to implement for homeschoolers. Also, I'm hoping that SWR will provide the comprehensive program (spelling, reading, grammar, and writing) that I've found lacking in The Writing Road to Reading (WRTR). Technically, WRTR is also a complete language arts program, but I would not be able to teach it. I'm not confident in teaching writing or grammar to my boys due to the lack of instruction I received in school. Therefore, I need a program that is more guided. With SWR, I should be able to handle giving the boys a gentle introduction to grammar and writing through 2nd grade. Once we get to 3rd grade, I plan to ramp up grammar and writing so I will probably supplement with intensive writing and grammar programs. Of course, I'll be learning right along with them.

Now that I've made this decision, I can dive into solving my next problem. Daniel's ready to start this program today. His reading is taking off and I'd like to make sure that we don't leave phonics, spelling, and handwriting in the dust. However, I won't be able to afford to buy it intil at least next August. Paying for preschool and buying our other curriculum have tapped my resources. Now, I've been sneakily teaching Daniel WRTR for years. We've worked on phoneme awareness, introduced the phonograms, and begun learning to form the letters properly. The programs are similar enough that I think that stuff will still benefit him, but I don't know for sure. I do plan to continue all of that over the summer really focusing on his writing, but I'm not sure if I can fill a whole 3 months of school with that. I guess we'll see. I'm hoping that once we get the program, we can use the beginning (learning phonograms, letter formation, and starting the notebook) as a good review before getting into spelling.

Our New Shelves!!

Bunking the boys' beds left a large void in their room where Caleb's bed used to be. I had planned on buying a bookshelf for the spot, but it would have taken me several months to save up enough money for it. That's okay, I can be patient. Then, I read about gutter shelves. That's right, gutters. They are really made out of plastic gutters from Lowe's. I saw them on Sonlight's message board and thought it looked like a great idea. Once I found out that it would cost me less than $60 to do the whole room...I was sold! I called my dad and he was supportive, but Shawn thought I was crazy. Oh well, that's his usual reaction to most of my ideas. Last week, I finally got the $$ and time to do it. Well, I didn't actually have the time, but I fit it in anyway. Once I got the materials from Lowe's, the project only took me about 2 hours to complete including having 3-yo and 5-yo helpers.

And here's the finished product:
Pretty cool looking, huh? Both my dad and Shawn agreed that they look great. They hold a lot more books than I thought and are very sturdy. After I had installed them, I found them described in a book that I'm reading called The Read-Aloud Handbook. The author claims that these shelves increase reading as the children are more likely to read a book when they can see the cover instead of the spine. I'll post more about this book later, but it was nice to get some validation from a real book. We don't really have a problem with our boys "reading" books, but at least now they are much more likely to put them away when they are done.

I also used the gutter shelves at the end of the boys' beds.

The boys read a lot of books at night so there were always books littered at the bottom of their beds. This created three problems for me: 1. It is hard to make their beds in the morning. 2. The books often slide off the bed. I have to remove the drawers underneath C-Monster's bed to get them and they can get damaged if they fall off of the top bunk. 3. It drives me CRAZY!

I do want to encourage them to read at night so I don't want to get rid of the books; I just needed a safe way to store them next to their beds. The gutter shelves work perfectly! They are plastic so I don't need to worry about the boys hurting themselves and they don't take up much room.

Overall, I'm very happy with the environment that this creates in the boys' room.

A Little Eye Candy...

Okay, it's time for some pictures. I finally replaced our camera's usb cable (the other one mysteriously disappeared) and I can download pics.















Here is our little schoolroom. Right now it get a lot of use even though we haven't officially begun school. The table is a perfect place for coloring and drawing plus the kids are drawn to the books on the shelves. It is right off the playroom, so it is a convenient place to hang out.

A pic from my very first Sonlight box day. For a Sonlighter, this is a special day.

This is our Sonlight core for next year. We have some great titles to read through. D-Man has already gotten Shawn to read some of the science books as bedtime stories. His favorite so far is How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World. Since we are planning on using this core several times, I covered the books with laminate. It is the same stuff that that you would find on library books. I still have to buy our language arts and math programs, but other than that, I'm ready for our first day of Kindergarten.

I'm trying to figure out this blogging thing...

Man this stuff is confusing!! Okay, I just got the tag cloud to work...I'm a genius! Hmmm, I wonder why D-Man thinks that he can read fluently just because he has mastered CVC words?

A glimpse for you

Okay family and friends...

I'm going to try this out. Please don't expect a new post everyday or even every week. It just isn't going to happen. I will be primarily blogging about our school. I want to give all of you an opportunity to share this experience with us. However, there will be plenty of pics and news of the baby too. I'm sure I won't be able to resist. So here goes:

We got our first order of Kindergarten materials today! Wahooo!! You all probably know how excited I am. I unpacked the box, did a quick look-thru of each book, pried D-Man's hands off of the 6 books he stole (yes, Grandpa D, they were all science books), and organized them on the bookshelf. My prep-work is far from over. I need to order covering supplies and cover all of the paperback books, read some (more) resource books, and study my instructor's guide.

We will officially start Kindergarten on June 1st as D-Man doesn't finish Pre-K at our church until the end of May. We are using Sonlight P4/5 for the core of our school adding in Horizons K math and the Writing Road to Reading (maybe Spell to Write and Read) for Language Arts. I'll be posting more on all of these at some point. We will be working on his reading in the meantime. For those of you who don't know, D-Man is starting to read. A couple of months ago, blending sounds into words just clicked in his brain. Since then, he's trying to read just about everything. Of course, he doesn't have the skills for that yet, so I try to reign him into Bob books and other easy readers. Bob books are great because they increase in difficulty slowly and he doesn't really need my help. Level one readers are a nice push for him. He needs my help with longer words and multi-letter sounds, but he can do most of those books by himself. For the next two months, we are going to focus on learning more phonograms (he knows about 35 of 70) and practicing his reading. He reads either a couple of Bob books or one easy reader to me everyday. I found out that he does better when he reads a little bit everyday. I don't want to push him too much, but if he takes a couple of days off, he gets frustrated when we get back into it. We don't always need to be upping our level of difficulty everyday, just exercizing the brain a bit.