New curriculum

I am trying a hands-on curriculum for the twins. It is called My Father’s World. My sister-in-law uses it with her girls. When we went home this past July, I looked through her teacher’s manual and other visuals. I liked all the activities and science that I saw. When I saw it for sale on my favorite use curriculum site, I used the money I made at my yard sale and bought the teacher’s manual. One problem with this curriculum is they do not use the King James for the Bible verses. This is only in the teacher’s edition so I can easily look it up in the King James and read it to them. It is better for them to see me open the Bible to read it anyway.

This is little of how our day goes. I started this when Rueben was working with his dad for a month so I had time to develop a rough schedule without interfering too much with his studies.

I do our Bible lesson while the kids are finishing their breakfast. This way they are all seated and somewhat occupied. I read the Bible to them and then draw a picture to show what the story is about. This helps to hold their attention, and they can tell me the next day what we talked about already that week. Then on Sunday I use the same lesson for the 4-6 yr. old girls class that I teach.

After breakfast we finish up our morning chores, and have some free play time before starting school. During school time we start by going over our memory verses and sing a song from the hymn book. I try to pick a hymn that has something to do with the week’s theme. For example we sang “Sunshine in my Soul” when we studied the letter S and the sun.

Our first subject is math. First, we go over the calendar. We review the days of the week, mark the day we are on, and talk about up coming events – like trips, holidays, or birthdays. I just purchased a chart with the months of the year that we will soon start going over each day. Then we count. I made a chart of numbers from 1-50. Each day we go over a new number. We started at one and are going in order for the numbers. Each day we add a straw in a bag that I attached to the wall by our chart. When we reach a ten, I put a rubber band around the bundle to illustrate the idea of ones and tens. Then we search the house looking for that number. They find them on the clocks, calendars, boxes, papers, and so on. They love this activity! Next we go over how to properly write the number. We practice on the chalk board, and then with their finger in a small box with salt on the bottom. Abby loves this because she likes to lick off the salt from her finger, but I do not let her put her finger back in the salt once she has licked it, so she has learned to wait until she is all done writing before licking her finger.

Josiah joins in the fun. He runs around with them when they look for the number of the day, he scribbles on the chalkboard, and loves to “write” in the salt, too.

Since I do not have any the student book, I have made math papers to go with the weekly theme. Right now we are working on writing our numbers, counting objects, and doing simple adding with objects to count. I try to keep the pages simple and short since they are only 3 and their attention span is rather short. I have mistakenly given them long worksheets only to have them quit after the first few problems.

After math we work in our phonics workbook to continue their phonics learning. I am still using the Amish books that I got this summer. I love these books because they are very unworldly, and they remind me of where I grew up.

Then we take a break and go for a walk if the weather is nice.

After lunch we do the reading section. I usually wait until Josiah is asleep to do this part. The teacher’s manual is for teaching sounds, but since the twins already know all their sounds I am stressing the handwriting of each letter and just reviewing sounds. They have a science theme for each week that corresponds with the letter being taught. For example they learned about the sun for S and the moon for M. Now we are learning about leaves for L and apples for A. I am trying to do the two letters a week, since we don’t need to learn the sounds; we just need to practice writing them. The manual is full of fun activities to teach and review the sounds, plus they have a section on handwriting activities – like the salt in a box. One I haven’t tried that will be messy, but fun is writing in pudding on a tray.

They have an activity for each day of the week. There are also suggested books for reading and activities to go along with each book.

After we finish our work for the week I put all their papers together in a small book using construction paper for the front and back cover. Then they show dad, or anyone else who comes to visit, the book of their work. The only problem with this is it will create clutter. In the past I have thrown away most of the papers we do – when they are not looking of course. I hate clutter and I am not very sentimental and I don’t feel like I need to hold on to every thing.

So far, this new curriculum is working real well for them. I enjoy the freedom of taking the ideas in the teacher's manual and adapting them to the needs of my children.

Our Phonics Journey...

... started when the twins, Abby and Robert, were about 2 ½ years old. Abby started pointing out “a, b, c, d’s” I was surprised that one so young would recognize letters. However, I took it as a hint to start teaching the letters and their sounds. I believe the sounds are more important than the names, so that is what I stressed. If you ask Abby to spell her name she will give the sounds /a/, /b/, /b/, /y/. Now you can name a letter and ask them to point to it or give its sound and they will, but they rarely give me the name of a letter. To teach the letters I started making my own signs on the computer. Here is a photo of what I did.




Each week or so – when I felt Abby was ready to learn new sounds – I added two new letters. We would go over the sounds usually once a day. I would point to the letter, say the name, say the sound and the name of the picture that illustrated the sound. For example “A says /a/ apple”, “B says /b/ bell” and so on through the letters they knew.

Robert at first used the /d/ sound for every letter, than when we did the Rr he switched to the /r/ sound for every thing. I could say point the letter that says /g/ and he would point to Gg. I knew he understood the sounds, but he wasn’t making them. Then one day he started using the correct sounds for all the letters.

By the time they turned three, they knew all the sounds, and my question was “What do I do now?” I asked several different people. The most helpful people were a home schooling mom and our school’s kindergarten teacher who had home schooled her daughter. They both liked the Abeka system, so I dug out my Abeka charts that I saved from when I taught at our church’s school and tutored reading.

I felt like there was too much on one chart for mine to learn all at once. I didn’t want to overwhelm them. I broke down the charts and made my own individual pages with one consonant per page. I found a cute ladder in my clip art and used it as the back ground. Then I put “ba”, “be”, “bi”, “bo”, “bu” in the ladder spaces. At the bottom of the page I took the verse that the Landmark Freedom’s curriculum uses for that letter. (Another friend gave me the teacher’s guide for K3) For Bb they use “…Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved…” (Acts 16:31) Here is a photo of how they look.

I made up a little song, which they love. I use their names and names of people they know in the song. For example the song for Rr goes “The R says /r/, The R says /r/, Robert ran round and round, /r/,/r/,/r/” All the songs follow the same pattern. I just make up different phrases for the middle.

Abby started doing the ladders perfectly from the beginning, and Robert went back to his same-sound-for-all-consonants trick. He would sound out /b/,/a/ then say /ra/. He likes his /r/-Robert letter. Then all of a sudden he started using the right sounds, just like he did for the alphabet.

The next step was to get them to read consonant-vowel-consonant words. I tried with Abby on several different pages and styles. At first she would sound it out correctly, but couldn’t seem to get the word put together. Then she started getting a few right, but she still struggled with it so I only would do a few at a time. On evening during bath time I took foam letters that I bought for them to play with in the tub and arranged them to form words. Abby started reading them one right after another. I was so excited. I called in my husband to hear her read. After that night she has been reading any consonant-vowel-consonant word we show her, but she has a limit of how many words she will read at one sitting before she gets tired of it.

They are almost 3 ½ right now. We do a school time on most days. When I went home to visit my family in PA in July I went to my favorite book store. It is run by Mennonite people. They have a large collection of used school books and several new workbooks. The prices are great. I spent about $25 for math and phonics books for the twins, even though I had to buy two of each. We are well into each of the books that we bought. I also print off free worksheets that I find on the web. Mostly for handwriting right now, since I don't have a workbook for that.

I am excited to see them love learning. I hope I can keep them enjoying learning and "school" work. I am also excited about each new concept they learn. I always thought you had to wait until they were five or six to teach them to read, but the twins keep surprising me with their hunger for more knowledge.

I keep "school" time to about 30-45 min. They don't sit for very long. The third desk is for Josiah (18m). He kept getting on Abby or Robert's desk, so I went and got him one - not like he stays in it, but it gives me a place to move him to when he is pushing his way onto the other desks.