Sunday Strategizing
I uploaded these checklists to help get us through the next few weeks before we phase into summer.
Weekly chart for Kieron (year 5)
Weekly chart for Sean (year 8 )
Paddy seems to be catching the literacy motivation bug. Yesterday evening he spent a lot of time scribbling on old post-it notes and dropping the notes in various corners, saying they were from the “easter squirrel”.
He spent hours and hours today drawing maps using different types of markers and crayons. Gradually this phased into making pictorial battles. He wanted me to play with him. The battles phased from pictorial into dramatic role playing and back into pictorial — the pen and sword parallel in the famous quote about pens being mightier than swords took on new meaning as we crossed pens several times.
Aidan was working on HWT again today and Paddy started doing it too. He spent quite a while making letters and naming them — he seems to know most of them, SOMEHOW. I didn’t teach him.
The book I’m presently reading, The Book of Learning and Forgetting (HT: A Room of My Own) makes the point that in a literate household, children join the literacy club simply by virtue of being in a household where the senior members of the “club” read and write. Long before they can read and write themselves, they are participating in the club, unless someone teaches them they are not good enough to participate or that it is difficult and unpleasant to be part of the club.
Since strewing and observing and encouraging is going so well for these little ones, I’m going to simply keep making the materials accessible, interchanging to keep it interesting, and disciplining myself to be part of their discovery process (telling them: “Mom’s too busy reading to teach you to read right now” isn’t exactly the role model I want to be! )
What’s working for them right now:
- Montessori Red Alphabet Book
- Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
- Handwriting without Tears Kindergarten and Preschool books
- Doug and Melissa combination chalkboard, marker board and magnetic board.
- Magnetic Letters.
- Word cards
- Moveable alphabet.
- (printable materials here, and exercises here)
- Leapfrog Refrigerator Phonics.
- Attention and lots of writing utensils and paper available.
April 29th, 2007 @ 4:20 am
[...] By January I had moved to a learning notes format as we worked through an Ambleside-type literature-based weekly schedule. We continued this through about March. Now in April, I recognize that the nice weather and other things going on meant that we were going to be distracted from the books and the winter daily rhythm would change a bit, so I strategized to put formal academics back to a minimum while I did some planning and pondering. (mostly the latter so far). [...]