Kindergarten Take 3

Today was the official start of J-Monster's Kindergarten year.  I can't believe I'm doing this for the 3rd time around.  The big boys were off to Pokemon camp so we had all morning to ourselves and got in an entire day's worth of school.

J-Monster loves crafting, so we started off with art.  Evidently, drawing a cute clown face in his Baby Lamb's Art book did not qualify as craft-time.  He did have a good time, but I'll be on Pinterest tonight to come up with something he will deem as a craft.  He has requested a "dog craft."  He is my first boy that likes hands-on craftsy stuff so this Kindy year will look a little different than the other two.

Then, we had our first spelling and writing lesson.  J-Monster has been interested in learning to read and can sound out CVC words, but we went full-on with Spell to Write and Read today.  We started learning the official recitation for the first 26 phonograms and learned how to write a, c, and d in cursive.  It was easy as pie for him and he loved using the salt box to write his letters.  He is my best 4 year old writer to date so I'm getting off kind of easy this time around.  I don't mind that at all.  We also have the advantage of a good cursive app on my iPad which adds to the fun. Baby-S even got in on that action.

Of course, no boy can resist some salt box drawing.  Here are his renditions of our two dogs: Wilson and Ribsy.

Finally, we got out math.  He is cruising through Singapore Essential Math A.  I knew it would be very simple for him as he is already adding, subtracting, counting to 100, and writing numbers well.  He doesn't care that it's easy.  He is a workbook kid and loves to finish pages.  He did about 10 pages today and continued his work during brothers' swim lessons.  We aren't in any hurry to rush him along in math.  There will be plenty of time this year to get through everything I have planned (which is a lot, as usual).

We were able to read a couple of school stories from Sonlight's P4/5 at the pool and more at bedtime.  All-in-all it was a great day.  I loved being alone with him and giving him all of my attention.  Maybe not all, Baby-S was hanging out and I did fold a load of laundry while he was doing math, but a lot more than usual.  J-Monster asked if we get to do Kindergarten everyday.  That's one of the reasons I love K-ers so much.  They just love school.

Sonlight and Spell to Write and Read

I decided to put a post together about this topic since I had a reader ask.  Really, there is no mystery...I just use each program in its entirety.  I just substitute SWR for Sonlight's LA.  Here are a couple of items worth noting:

SWR is a complete LA program for K-2/3.  It includes all of the necessary phonics, handwriting, grammar, and writing for those ages.  Despite that, I'm adding Cursive First for handwriting (really, we're finished with this), First Language Lessons (grammar), and Writing with Ease (writing) this year for 1st grade. 

Cursive First was designed to use with SWR to teach cursive.  There's not much to it but it provided just enough support to give me confidence teaching cursive to D-Man. It does include worksheets that correspond with learning the phonograms. We used some of them, but ditched them when we started the spelling lists for the year. D-man is pretty intolerant of busy work and writing the words throughout the week gives him ample handwriting practice. We sometimes have little refreshers on how two letters connect (mostly after a straight connecter, but he's getting better each week).

Writing with Ease (WWE) and First Language Lessons (FLL) are not necessary for most people using SWR. I'm adding them because those are the areas in which I am the least confident teaching. I learned very little grammar in school so the scripted nature of FLL will be a big help. I plan to teach the boys writing classically and WWE is giving us a good head start on that road. However, instead of using the WWE workbooks, I'm correlating our narration and dictation with our SL and Noeo reading. Another reason is simply that I love to supplement with great resources. If you've read my blog at all, you know that by now and take my supplementing with a grain of salt :).

I do still use the Sonlight readers alongside SWR. SWR does call for assigned reading several weeks into the program (after list I-1). I found the recommendation to wait on assigned reading a good one. The author, Wanda Sanseri, calls reading too early "torture reading" and waits until the child has the skills he needs to read well. Before they start reading books, they read the spelling lists several times a week to practice decoding and fluency. By the time D-Man got to list I-1, he started in week 24 of Sonlight's Readers 1 (after the I Can Read It Series). His fluency took off and he was soon capable of reading at a 4th grade level. I've chosen to keep him tracking in Sonlight's reader programs so he's working his way through Readers 2. They are an easy read for him, but he's enjoying the books and often chooses tougher material from the library as his free reading selections. I have him read all of the Sonlight books aloud to me while he reads his free reading selections silently. His reading and spelling levels are still steadily improving through the SWR spelling lists and enrichments. C-Monster is a bit of a different animal as he started reading before 3 and likes to pick up Fun Tales (Readers K) or Bob Books so I expect him to continue this trend over the next year and possibly getting through the first 24 weeks of Readers 1 (which he's capable of reading now) or farther. Between our collection and the library, we'll have plenty of books to keep him busy.

SWR-First Grade Schedule

It's ready! My Spell to Write and Read schedule for 1st grade is done. This time I went through and chose which enrichments I want to do from the WISE Guide. That'll make it even more open-and-go for me.

This year we'll be doing 20 words/week and writing everything in cursive. D-Man actually asked to learn cursive, so he's pretty excited about it. We're already on week 2 of the schedule and love Cursive First.


SWR Schedule-1st Grade

New Curriculum: Cursive First

We have finished much of our Kindergarten curriculum so I've been getting a jump start on next year and exploring different programs.

Cursive First

I wasn't planning on starting Cursive First (CF) until at least June when I make my next SWR purchase. However, I was able to buy it used from a fellow homeschooling mom for a good price. This was great for us since D-Man has been begging to start cursive since we started K. It was also the motivation I needed to make a salt box for C-Monster.

The woman who sold it to me stated that she needed something with a little more handholding. I can see what she means; CF is a barebones program. It's filled with a lot more theory than how-to. However, I taught D-Man manuscript without a formal program (just the instructions in SWR) and had no difficulty. CF is the perfect amount of help for me to get him started in cursive. The CF style is very simple and nice for a young child. My plan is to have him master this style and then we can choose a "prettier" cursive style together later on. It is really important to me for my boys to have nice, legible handwriting.

When the package came in the mail, D-Man asked to start immediately. Without having time to read the manual, I decided that we could work on some easy letters like a and d on the whiteboard. He, of course, wanted to do all of them. He quickly changed his tune when he found that it was much more difficult than he'd thought. It turns out, he just wasn't ready for the whiteboard yet. While my husband put the boys to bed, I decided to read the manual which prompted me to make a saltbox. This took me about an hour, but was definitely worth it. Since then, I've been teaching D-Man his cursive letters using the saltbox. Only after he's practiced them several times in the box, we move on to the appropriate worksheet. The worksheets are simple, but exactly what we need. The first day, I even had to give C-Monster his own worksheet so that he could keep up with his big brother. The salt box has been a huge hit and very useful tool. He went very quickly from just forming the letters to learning how to connect them to forming simple words like 'cat' and 'dog.' Most of all, they think it's fun. It is also a perfect pre-writing exercise for C-Monster. He's been asking me to write a letter in the saltbox and then he'll trace over my writing with his finger. I'm really focusing on his formation as D-Man had developed a lot of bad habits by the time we'd started K.

Spell to Write and Read-Learning Log

Oh, the neglected blog. We've been sick and tired (ha,ha) and blogging is the first thing that goes. Actually, the second. The first was being a good sister. Now that I've taken care of my sisterly duties (sorry, Katrina!), I have a little time to blog this morning. Normally, we'd be doing school, but D-Man has just rediscovered Lincoln Logs so he's busy building a village. It is tough to build a Lincoln Log village as a 5yo when you have an 18 month old brother. We had so many meltdowns yesterday on both sides that I had to ban Lincoln Log use. Today, D-Man asked if Little-J could take a nap at 8am so that he could rebuild his village. Considering that the baby slept for 14 hours last night and had only been up for an hour, I said no. I finally convinced D-Man and C-Monster to rebuild the village in their bedroom where the door can be closed all day preventing little feet from trampling the buildings. So, Little-J is in my room with me figuring out how to get the shapes through the correct holes into the box and I am blogging.

This first post is owed to a friend. She is very interested in using SWR and we've been talking about it online. It's so hard to get a handle on a program and which parts you NEED to buy when you haven't seen it in action. So...here is a little bit about the Learning Log. This log becomes a self-made textbook for the year. It contains all of the reference pages and spelling words we've covered. At the end of the year, it will be a record of what we've done and we'll start a fresh one for the upcoming year.

Reference pages: The biggest advantage of the Primary Learning Log is the formatting on the reference pages. Reference pages are pages used to teach/review a concept or spelling rule. I really appreciate the clutter-free ease of these pages. It really maximizes our teaching time and D-Man's understanding of the concept. We will fill these in and discuss them each year. The SWR philosophy isn't first-time mastery, but mastery through reviewing year after year.

Spelling list pages: The formatting is less important here, but nice to have. The lists themselves are very valuable. For a K'er, it is VERY important that they read their spelling lists. It helps build reading fluency and gives them more exposure to the words. At first, D-Man would request to read from my Learning Log since the penmanship was so much neater. I'd let him since I wanted his frustration level to be as low as possible. In the meantime, we kept recording his words in his logbook working on his penmanship each week. Now that his reading is more fluent and his writing is neater, he would rather read from his own logbook. It also helpful for me to look through his book and see his progress for the year. Another use of the lists is to mark words as he gets them wrong on his tests. I haven't made this a priority this year as I was focused on building his confidence and he tends to get down on himself for making mistakes. Also, this year was only an introduction to the lists we covered. Even though D-Man scored a 90% or higher on all but 2 lists, I don't expect mastery until we cover the list as least twice. We'll start over at the beginning next year and with mastery expected, I'll keep track of missed words more closely. Another aspect of the lists in the future will be the expectation of D-Man to study for his tests. I don't require this right now because of his age, but I will expect more independent study as he gets older. Using his log will be an integral part of this.

Some of these pictures are from my log and some are from D-Man's log. Why do I have a log? Well, a lot of people complain that SWR is hard to use. It does take time for the teacher to understand the program and the fastest way of doing that it to build a log. I taught the program to myself before I started with D-Man. I went through each reference page and spelling list trying not to cheat by looking at the samples in the back of the book. It really helped me learn the marking process and use of each reference page. As we are advancing in the lists and words are getting harder, preparing my own log gives me exposure to any potential questions I might have and time to get answers from the author or a trainer.

Weekly Update--catch up...Week 20

Oh...the neglected blog! I've been delinquent with my blog recently because we've been so BUSY. Between Airrosti treatment (my shoulder feels so much better), minor illness, and dr. appts (it was only a mosquito bite!), we've been on the go. However, school goes on. We've had some great school days in the last few weeks. It really is fun for this mom to watch her son's brain figure things out. So here's what's been going on...

LA: SWR has been a big focus for us lately. The words have gotten a bit harder so D-Man needs to practice them more during the week. I've had to add in some extra review. He really knows his phonograms and is good at applying them to the words, but when there are phonogram options for a word, he needs to practice that word to remember which phonogram to use. An example of this is the word "read." He knows that both 'ea' and 'ee' make the long e sound so he could use either in this word, but only one is correct. So, we've started dictation once/week trying to use as many of his spelling words as possible. He usually writes three sentences as I dictate to him and we'll get about 6-7 of the 10 words for that week in the sentences. I've also been giving him quizzes on Wednesday and Thursday to reinforce his words, but there is a big difference between the quizzes and a test. He's allowed to ask me questions on the quiz and I stop him if I see he's writing a word wrong. We do the quizzes on his little white board which is quick and easy. They take about 5 minutes. I also solved my problem of D-Man not reading the words out of his log book by assigning 2-3 lists/day. I wrote down our list assignments on my schedule so it gets done. Now, he's getting into me timing him reading the lists and is proud of how fast he can read many of the earlier lists. All of this practicing has been paying off as he's gotten a 100% on his last two tests.

The other exciting LA development is that he now knows all 70 phonograms. We finished the last four this week. He has about 60 of them mastered. A few will take some time for mastery (ie, ei, and ough), but we have plenty of time for that. He really likes my blue/yellow/red method of sorting his phonogram cards as it shows him his progress and motivates him to get more cards in the blue pile (he's a strong visual learner!). Now that he's learned all of the phonograms, I'm assigning him reading. It's pretty exciting to see him tackle a book and read it with minimal help from me. Right now, we're working our way through our rather large (thanks Grandma) library of level 1 readers. He could probably handle harder books, but I don't want it to be "torture reading" (Wanda Sanseri's phrase). These books are easy, but do allow him to practice his decoding skills. I'm seeing the beauty of the WISE guide words lists in action. They are designed around frequently used words. Because of this, he can read several words in his readers fluently (his spelling words) and only have to work at reading the few that he hasn't encountered yet. This way, he gets plenty of practice and the satisfaction of reading a book all by himself, but doesn't get frustrated sounding out each word. He's been reading about 2 readers/day. We'll keep cycling through these and SL Readers 1 until March when I order our next SL core. This will come with Readers 2 which will be a step up in difficulty. After that, I think we'll be able to follow the SL readers schedule and include library books when he needs some extra reading. He is really getting into reading books on his own. Thursday night, he read a knock-knock joke book and Curious George's ABCs to C-Monster as bedtime stories. He did it on his own accord and really enjoyed it.

Math: D-Man has finished Singapore 1A and is now working on 1B. He's done 21 lessons in a week. I thought we'd slow down when we got to 1B, but the material is still easy for him. He understands regrouping and now automatically uses it when needed. We will start multiplication in a couple of weeks and I plan on slowing down to make sure he really understands it. We also need to work on his addition/subtraction math facts a bit. They come naturally for him and he automatically recalls most of them just from completing Horizons K, but I want him to have them down cold because he's advancing in math so quickly. We're still doing 1 lesson of Horizons 1 every day as well. Horizons includes a lot of problems and gives him good practice of what he's learning in Singapore. Horizons 1 includes tests every 10 lessons and I've been administering them as tests. D-Man doesn't have any problem with this...he thinks tests are fun. In fact, he likes to see how well he knows the material. It helps that he's received a 100% on both tests. Horizons is primarily review for him so I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

Sonlight: Wow, we're on week 28 already. Milly Molly Mandy is still a big favorite. I think we'd all like to go visit her in her little village and meet her friends. I really love the innocence of the book and am enjoying watching the boys become friends with Milly Molly Mandy. It is fun seeing the boys getting lost in and enjoying literature as much as I do. D-Man also loves the book Then and Now. It's scheduled to read 2 pages/week, but I think we'll be reading the whole book about once/week instead. It's a cute book showing how ordinary things (like a market or a kitchen) have changed over the years. I think it's a great intro to history. Next week will be our last week of formal SL reading for awhile. We'll be taking time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas to do "Christmas School."

Art: I know I've raved over The Way They See It before, but I just can't say enough good things about this book. It is a perfect introduction to Art History and learning about creative expression. It's giving me an opportunity to teach the boys about the benefits of being individuals and how it's okay to express ourselves uniquely. That's a lesson that will be replayed over the years since D-Man and C-Monster are so different in every way and I don't want them to get in the habit of comparing. Last week, we studied a painting about a stormy sky. I'd been waiting for our sky to have something interesting to color (we have a lot of clear, blue sky days). One night, I noticed how beautiful the sunset was. We actually had a few clouds and the sky was filled with red, orange, and purple. I told the boys to look at it and D-Man exclaimed, "Mom, can we go draw it? I'll get the crayons...don't forget the book!" It was a fabulous idea so we doused ourselved in bug spray and spent the next hour coloring the sunset. Okay, C-Monster drew his version of a helicopter racing an airplane through the sky...all with a yellow crayon, but the intent was there. I'm not in a hurry to finish the book or get through all of the projects, so we might spend the next month or so just coloring the sky.

Well, that's the jist of the last 4 weeks or so. I'll definitely be posting more as we get closer to Christmas. I'm eager to share how Christmas school goes for us.

SWR Binders

A few people have asked about SWR Binder Organization so I decided to post mine here.

I have two binders: The first is my Teacher's Binder. I use this one everyday.

It has 4 tabs so far:

1. Schedules/Procedures. Here I keep the most important stuff. I have my schedule, a dictation guide, a introduce vs. quiz vs. test guide, and different helps that I print off of the yahoo group.

2. Log. This is a log that I keep to help me remember what we've done each day. I have my schedule, but I don't follow it exactly. I figure this log will help out when I start SWR with C-Monster.

3. Enrichments/Game Ideas. This is where I keep any ideas I have or find on good enrichments. The yahoo group is full of them. This way I can keep my favorites organized.

4. Materials. Here I have all of my additional materials. I currently have the McCall-Hardy and McCall-Crabbs books, the Suggested Book List, and my getting started printouts. This will grow when I order the rest of the materials next year.

Up front, I keep two pencil pouches. I have one for pencils and highlighters and a second one to hold our phonogram cards. I tried it all in one pencil pouch, but that didn't work. Then, in the front pocket, I have my own logbook.

The second binder is D-Man's student binder. This doesn't get used too often yet. It really just holds his logbook and tests. Eventually, he'll include more. It has 5 tabs.

1. Phonogram/Spelling Practice. This is just a place where we put any practice sheets that we work on. Realistically, I'll probably chuck all of these at the end of the year.

2. Quizzes/Tests. This is where I file his tests. I don't really put quizzes in here anymore since we do most of those on the white board.

3. Enrichments. This is where I will file any products from enrichments we do. We haven't had any yet.

4. Books read. I have a log that I made to record all of the books he's read. I don't count Bob Books or Fun Tales, so the only thing we have written down so far is Go, Dog, Go. This list will be very useful soon.

5. Paper. This is just where we keep extra paper for writing. I got a huge ream of paper for him, so we just put about 50 sheets in his notebook for easier access.

He also has a pencil pouch that contain a pencil and his very own red pencil.

There you have it. One last thing that has really helped was copying the Scope and Sequence sheet for D-Man. I place a checkmark next to each step as we start it.

Phonogram Games

Anything is fun if you put it into a board game, right? That's the sentiment at our house. We are a home full of gamers. We play some kind of game every night before bed. Some of the boys' favorites are Sorry, Mancala, Uno, and Connect Four. Therefore, I didn't think twice when I saw a game package on the Spell to Write and Read website. I just put it into my cart. The whole package came with two board games (really one with 2 different board), Phonogram Bingo, and instructions for several other phonogram card games.

These games make reviewing our phonograms too easy. We play the board game a few time/week. C-Monster gets his own pile of phonograms (just the first 26) and the rest of us draw from D-Man's pile of the phonograms he's learned. After finishing a turn, the player draws a card from the pile. If he can correctly say all of the sounds for that phonogram, he gets to keep the card. The person with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

Let's face the fact, D-Man's extremely competitive. With parents like his, it's no wonder where he gets it. Well, we're using it for good in this game. If he wants to win, he needs to know those phonogram sounds. It's really Shawn who's at a disadvantage. It's hard to guess the four sounds of 'ou' if you haven't been taught. This game's helping him too.

Since we've been playing this game, I haven't seen the need to quiz the phonograms very often. I do review and quiz the ones that he hasn't quite mastered, but there aren't many of those at the moment. I love products like this that make learning easy and painless.

What you don't see in these pictures is that minutes after they were taken, D-Man slipped off of the chair and cut the corner of his eye. The game was abandoned while Shawn took him to an urgent care clinic. Fortunately, it looked MUCH worse than it actually was and no stiches were needed. He did have a swollen, black eye along with his nasty cut for a few days, but such is the life of a boy.

Spelling Word Box

An important part of Spell to Write and Read is doing enrichments. Enrichments are activities designed to reinforce the words and phonograms in interesting ways. One of D-Man's favorites is his box of spelling words. Each week, he writes his words on 3x2.5" cards. Then we file them in a box according to each list. This has turned out to be a great activity. First, he gets to practice spelling the words when he writes them on the cards. Then, we can use the cards in a couple of ways. We use them as flashcards to practice reading the words. This helps D-Man improve his reading fluency. We also arrange them into sentences. This is a sneaky way to introduce grammar gently. When we form sentences, we learn about nouns, verbs, pronouns, and adjectives. Of course, once we form a sentence, he reads it and practices fluency. So much work in a simple activity. I'm sure I'll come up with more ways to use these cards as we go on with the program.

For D-Man, his box is a physical reminder of what he's accomplished so far. He likes to look at and read "his words" and insists that they are filed in order. So far he has 80 words in his box and we add 10 words per week.

SWR Schedule

I've had a few requests for my SWR schedule lately, so I thought I'd post it for everyone.

We don't follow it exactly. I try to get all of the activities done during the week, but it doesn't always happen and I often switch what's going on day-to-day. The schedule's more to keep me on track. SWR isn't just about dictating words on Monday and testing them on Friday. What happens in between is equally as or even more important.

To create this schedule, I basically took the example in the SWR book for first graders and extended it twice as long since we're only doing 10 words/week instead of 20. I had to add some extra enrichments to fill in every other week. Between the game package I bought, the WISE Guide, and the SWR Yahoo group, there are plenty of enrichments for me to fill our schedule.

SWR Schedule Kindergarten-Updated

Spelling Tests

I'm writing this post in response to questions that are being asked about how D-Man is doing on his spelling tests. First, I should expain how I give the tests. The point of the test isn't for him to get 100% on it. It is for him to do it ALL BY HIMSELF with no help from me. That is tough for me; I like to help him out. However, since it is important to find out how well he's grasping the phonograms and spelling words, I just sit there and tell him the words. I can also use them in a sentence for him, but that seems to distract him from writing down the actual spelling word. I throw in maybe 2 sentences in out of 10 words.


It is also important to know that we'll do all of these same words next year. The program is designed to be redundant. We'll go over each list at least twice. Depending on how fast we go through the words, I may do a quick review each year of the words we've already covered twice just to make sure he's got it. This year, we'll go through lists A-I (approximately) doing only 10 words/week. Next year we'll do lists A-L doing 20 words/week. In case you're wondering, the lists vary in number of words. The first few lists have 20 words in them.



He's doing great so far. We completed our 3rd test today and he got a 100%. He also scored 100% on the first two. This was the first week that the words had a couple of two-letter phonograms included. It actually required him to think about how to spell the words. That is the point...not to memorize how each word is spelled, but to think about the composition of the word. One of the many reasons I love this program! This method will allow him to spell words correctly that he's never seen as well as read (sound out) words that he's never read before.

Daniel's First Spelling List

Today, we finally got to start spelling. We had to wait until D-Man learned the proper way to form all of his letters. He had picked up some bad habits by trying to figure out how to write by himself, so we learned the proper way to write each letter. I thought that he would fight me, but he didn't have any problems. I think that he likes knowing the "right" way to do it instead of guessing or making it up each time he writes a letter.

I had planned on taking it fairly slow only doing 2-4 letters each day, but D-Man had other ideas. He didn't want to only do two letters the first day, he wanted to do ALL of them. So, we did. He insisted on doing that everyday. I found that it was much easier for him to write on a dry erase board instead of a piece of paper. He doesn't have to put much pressure on a dry-erase marker, so it keeps him from getting tired as he writes. Here was his dry-erase board the first day:

Yes, it is very colorful. I think he did a GREAT job.

I figured that we couldn't just practice letters everyday or he would get bored. Plus, now that he knows how to form them correctly, he will have plenty of opportunity to practice them as we do our spelling words. One of the prinicples that SWR keeps repeating is to get on with it.

I decided that we would only do 10 words/wk this year so that it wouldn't take too long and D-Man wouldn't get tired writing them. The first 10 words were a breeze for him. I didn't know how it would go since he's never spelled before. He can read all of the words easily, but spelling is a different skill. I'm glad that today was easy for him so that he'll be excited to do more later. We wrote them first on a piece of paper so that he wouldn't have to concentrate on his penmanship. Later, we transferred them to his log concentrating more on penmanship. Here is a pic of the words in his log.

If you're wondering why there is a 3 on top of the a in all and the y in my is underlined, that is part of the program. We use marking in our log to remind us how a phonogram sounds in the word. The 3 indicates that it is the third sound of "a" and the line tells us that it is the second vowel sound of "y" (standing in for "I").

This log essentially becomes his textbook for the year. It has reference pages in the back that we are building and his spelling words in the front. We will be reading these words throughout the year to help him gain fluency.

When we do our spelling words each week, he doesn't just copy them. I tell (dictate) the word to him and help him figure out which phonograms to use for the words. He actually had to think about how the word is constructed. I think it is a great method to learn phonics to both encode and decode words.

Now that we have our words for the week, we'll do several enrichment exercises with them and have a test on Friday. I'm very interested to find out how he handles his first test.

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.