Drawing Faces

I recently came across this book about drawing faces when I read a post about it at The Artful Parent. I immediately had to check it out as this seemed like something D would enjoy. I got a copy from our local library and D went crazy drawing faces!  It has simple, easy to understand instructions that the child can follow without parental guidance.  I had set this book and a few sheets of paper with a marker on D's shelf this week and this book was the center of her school this week!

The book we got from the library is a smaller one than the one displayed above in Amazon, probably a different edition.

Above is a picture of a page from this book, so you can see how easy this is.

D drew all of the above herself and would have done more if she had not run out of paper! 

Here are some of my favorites!

Surprised Sam

Proud Paul

Tired Tilly

Puzzled Polly

Since this book was such a hit, I am planning to buy this book and check out the other titles from this author from the library.  Here are a few other ones listed on Amazon.

Why are we doing Dwyer and All About Spelling?

I recently received a question from a reader who is a fellow homeschooler and a good friend, asking me why I would be going through the Dwyer Reading Scheme, when All About Spelling covers all the phonetic rules and wouldn't the same results be expected at the end of the AAS program?

The Dwyer Reading Scheme is exactly as the name implies, a Scheme for Reading.  To me, Reading  is a different skill that requires different thinking capabilities when compared to the Spelling skill.  In our house, the approach to learning is based on Montessori and it is widely believed in the Montessori world and I have found true in our case too, is that writing comes before reading.  So D has been in a sensitive period for writing for a long time. With all the exercises that we covered using the Dwyer Scheme, her spelling was purely phonetic.  Even with learning the spelling variations (Reading Folders work) in the Dwyer Scheme, I found that the child learns that a phonogram can be spelt differently, but the strategy of when to use what was missing.  I can give you two examples to explain this:

1. Double letters that are used to spell words like "off", "dress", "smell", etc.: Reading these words need no extra knowledge other than knowing the sounds "f", "s" or "l" makes and that two "f"s, "s"s or "l"s still make the same sound.  But while writing these words, how do we know when to double and when not to? This is the key that is addressed using the AAS program.  In this  program there are various rules that the child learns and is taught when to use them.  
2. The sound of "/k/" at the end of a word: "c", "ck" and "k" make the same sound, so while reading this does not make a difference, so nothing special is there in the Dwyer Scheme to address this.  Then again while writing and trying to spell a word which one do you use? Again AAS addresses this and teaches the rule.

There are many more examples I can give, but I think you get the point.  I personally am a fairly decent speller but my skills come from years of practice.  I don't know a lot of these rules for correct spelling and I am learning as we go along with the AAS program!  

So, since AAS seems to address all the variations and teaches all the rules, why not stick with just AAS, why go through the Dwyer scheme too? As I have mentioned before you need not know all these rules to read. It is enough if you know the phonograms, their variations and sight/puzzle words. So once you go through the Dwyer scheme, even though the child might not know all the rules to spelling, he/she can explode into the world of reading.  This is what happened in our case and D is much more open and confident in reading, now that we have gone through all the reading folders.  As for spelling, we completed, Level 1 in AAS and are now a couple of lessons into Level 2.  

Hope this explanation clears the need for use of both the Dwyer Reading Scheme as well as the AAS program.  I wanted to post my answer to the question on this blog so that it helps other parents having similar questions.  I am not paid or compensated by AAS, I bought both the levels from their site!  I just love this program for spelling as much as I love the Dwyer Scheme for reading!

I am linking this post up to Montessori Monday.

Another good week at our home!

We had another great work week at our home with D. She is moving along great with her reading and in Math we have covered all the four basic operations including exchanging at the bank and D loves this work. We will probably work on it some more next week and I will introduce the stamp game the following week. I need to go through Karen Tyler's culture albums and put out more work in that area. I also need to put out some holiday themed work for next week. So much to do and so little time! Anyway, here are a few pictures of some serious work this week!

More Stitching

Writing the different phonogram variations

Tool Box Work

3-Part Matching work

3-Part Card Label Matching and verifying using the Control Card

In addition to Montessori work, we also completed a couple of lessons from All About Spelling Level 2 and proceeded with abstraction using the Base 10 picture cards, which is similar to the stamp game.  We baked a chocolate pie for my husband's birthday.  All in all we had a fun week!


I am linking this post to Montessori Monday.

FIAR - Volume 1: How to make an Apple Pie and See the World

We rowed "How to make an Apple Pie and See the World" mid October around the time we went apple picking to a nearby orchard.  This is a cute and funny story of how to make an apple pie a little girl goes around the world to get the various ingredients!

Of course there are ample opportunities to indulge in some World Geography in this row.  We located the various countries on our world map and discussed how certain ingredients are native to certain countries.

We went apple picking to a nearby orchard and the kids had so much fun there.  We ended up making apple sauce and some snack sized apple pies with those apples.  We discussed the different kinds of apples we picked and had a taste test to find which one we liked best!

We did some Science by cutting an apple in half and naming the parts of an apple.  We used the free cards from here.

We also got the free lifecycle cards from Montessori for Everyone and D loved this work.

We made some red and white playdough and D made apple pies.

We made apple prints, cutting an apple in half both sideways and length-wise.

We also worked with this poem during this week and poetry is always a favorite in our house.

We had checked out an "Apples" kit from our local library.  So, in addition to the main FIAR book there were other lovely books on Apples that we rowed.  Here are a few from the 10 books we rowed.

We had great fun with this row!  I am so late in posting this! I am linking this up to Montessori Monday.

FIAR - Volume 1: Cranberry Thanksgiving

We rowed "Cranberry Thanksgiving" the week before Thanksgiving. This is a wonderful story on how appearances can be deceptive and accepting people for their values. We loved this row and had a lot of wonderful conversations based on the theme of this story.

Picture taken from http://www.newenglandrcd.org/

This story is set in the New England region, so we identified the states in this region and located it on our USA map. We also discussed how cranberries are harvested and looked at pictures of it online.  Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry for beautiful pictures and more information on Cranberries and how they are harvested.

This picture is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry

Of course we had to try out the secret recipe, so we baked cranberry bread with real cranberries and some craisins. The recipe is extremely straightforward so D was able to make it mostly by herself once I measured and set out the ingredients. Here is a picture of the bread pan ready to go into the oven.

Here is a picture after I took it out of the oven.

The bread was delicious! D and I added some sugar and water to the left over cranberries and made a sauce/ jelly that tastes delicious with plain bread!

This is the first year we celebrated thanksgiving with friends and family and we loved the feast and the gathering!

We read "The very first Thanksgiving day" and made our story necklace using the beads we had on hand. We did not have white beads for snow, so we substituted yellow ones! D had a lot of fun retelling this story several times!

This idea is originally from here.  It was a great row and a perfect Thanksgiving, though I am a week late in posting this! Better late than never!  Since we did do some Montessori themed activities (baking and bead lacing) I am linking this up to Montessori Monday.

Our week

Hope everybody had a wonderful thanksgiving weekend! We had a great time sharing feasts with friends and family.  I am personally thankful to my wonderful husband and all that he does for us.  He has taken upon the full responsibility of providing for us, because of which I get to do what I want to do most, raising our beautiful daughters.

Last week was short, but a very productive week at our homeschool.  Here are some pictures of D in action.  D completed a big work last week, Reading Folders sort.  

Here she is checking her work using the control of error on the back of the phonogram cards.

In the next few shots, D is working on the cylinder blocks, monomial and binomial cubes.

Here she is working on the Writing Exercise I posted about earlier.

We've been working with Nouns and Articles in our grammar farm.

In Math, we worked on addition with carry over and subtraction with exchange using golden beads and D loved it.  Here is a picture of few of her completed problems.

She also worked on some sewing and here is her finished product.

We worked on a lot more, but I don't have pictures of everything.  All in all it was an awesome productive week!

I am linking this post to Montessori Monday.

Language/Reading update and free download

D has been going over all the reading folders and mini booklets that I made for her and now has almost mastered all of the phonogram variations. D has never been reading enthusiastically by herself up until we finished the reading folder work. The texts in most of the early reader books that she read never interested her. The problem with some of the other reader series that we could get at our library in the topics that were of interest to her were too advanced for her. Now that she has completed the reading folder work she can refer to her phonogram dictionary and read with ease!



So she has been reading through the level 1 and level 2 readers in the Real Kids Readers series, Robin Hill School readers and The Cat in the Hat readers from the library the past few weeks. I check out around ten to twelve readers at a time each week from these series and I have a basket set up for her. Now all she wants to do all day is to keep reading! I noticed that she keeps coming back to each reader several times till she masters reading the text fluently.

After she finished all the reading folders we celebrated and I presented the phonogram dictionary to her as a gift! She is getting used to it and getting the hang of looking up the spelling variations by herself instead of just asking me whenever she encounters a variation she can't remember!

Guess who else is in love with the phonogram dictionary? You are right, my one year old loves to snatch it from her sister and make a run to the nearest corner to tear it up or to decorate it with a stray marker! So for now the dictionary is restricted to our school room and I have this alternate set up on our living room high above M's reach.

As you can see, this has all the Reading Folder variations and one example for each phonogram. This works perfectly when D is reading in our living room where we hang out most of the day. I often catch D looking at this during times when she is not reading and simply go through the sounds and example words!

Speaking of Phonogram Dictionary a few of you had asked about it after my previous posts on the Dwyer series. Luckily for me, Ms. Barbara Furst sent me her extra copy!  Then she sent me another copy to make available to my readers! So here you can download the dictionary!  I also have all the downloads in the downloads page, which you can access by clicking on the "Downloads" menu item above.  The variations are grouped into four dictionaries.  Here is a picture of how the completed ones look like.

We are very excited with this new stage in reading and are moving forward with classified definitions, word study and the function of words! I will post about these as we progress through!

I am linking this post to Montessori Monday.