First Week Readings

Here's what's being read at the Oak House Academy this week.

Tiny Dancer: A variety of versions of Goldilocks. She's working on the Goldilocks literature pocket, so we have been having fun reading the stories. I just can't understand why Goldilocks goes into someone else's house, eats their food, breaks their chair, and takes a nap. I have a hard time connecting with this story. But I suppose for children it's the thrill of seeing someone else be naughty, right?

Little Bear:  Beowulf: A Hero's Tale Retold by James Rumford. It's a beautiful picture book of the famous story. It's pretty gruesome, but it was actually Tiny Dancer who loved it the most. She could answer all of my questions about the story, and she was caught during the week playing out the story with her toys. 

After we finished Beowulf, we started reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Michael Morpurgo. This one is a little longer, so it will take us a few days. We've only come to the part where Gawain volunteers to play the Green Knight's "game." He's a pretty gruesome character, himself. I thought Little Bear might be a little afraid of these stories, but he seems to be loving the adventure.

His fun reading includes the Weird School Books. There are a ton of these, and they are very funny. He's read all the library has, so he was thrilled to find a new one this week. 

He also really likes the Horace Splattly series.  

Curly:  He has two books he's working through for school, just for literature. He's reading Beowulf: A New Telling by Robert Nye with me. It's a longer, fuller version of the story. There are more details, and it's even more gruesome. The descriptions of Grendel the ogre are pretty vivid.

He's also reading The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff on his own. This one is a nice challenge for him and fits into the time period of our year.

Just for fun, he's in the midst of the Artemis Fowl series. He's on a mission to finish them all by Labor Day. We'll see...  

And for me, I'm reading several things at the moment, but this one really has my attention. I first heard the story on This American Life, my favorite NPR show, and was really intrigued. I wrote the title down to wait for it to become available at the library. It was a long wait, but it was worth it!

How about you? What are you reading?

Literature Pockets

When I was writing about our kindergarten plans, I mentioned that we will be using literature pockets. I had some feedback about those, so I thought I would share a little more about them.

We used two different types last year.

Little Bear used history pockets, Ancient Civilizations. We had been using Story of the World, volume 1, but as much as Curly loved it, Little Bear was not interested. I still wanted him to learn some of the material, so when my friend, Mrs. Nerdy, showed me her history pockets book, I was excited.

Each week we read the included history segment. We learned the new words, defined them, and illustrated them. We read relevant books from the library. Our library is really great at getting books from throughout the county, so as long as we planned ahead, we had a huge pile to refer to. Some of the books were over his level, so we would just use the pictures to give him a better glimpse into the time period. Some of the books were fiction, and he loved reading tales from the times. Some of the books were great for his reading level, and he really enjoying digging deeper. Little Bear has always liked history, so that was a lot of fun for him.

After we spent two days learning about the time period, we worked on some of the crafts. In Ancient Egypt we had a crocodile who gave us a tour of the wildlife along the Nile River. In Ancient Greece we created comedy and tragedy masks. In Ancient Rome, we designed triumphal arches and laurel wreaths. Ancient China was not nearly as interesting to him, but we still managed to make lanterns with Mandarin numbers and a dragon.

The last day of the study, Little Bear had to write a postcard about his travels. The space was really tiny for a first grader, so I usually wrote what he dictated. He wrote to his grandparents, Gibby and Grandad, each time. He loved telling them about what he learned and "saw," and it was a great summary for him.

 Tiny Dancer was not about to be left out, so we also borrowed Mrs. Nerdy's fairy tale pockets.

She loved them! It was enough to make her feel like she was "doing school" with her brothers, but was not tons of work for me. She's notorious for coming up with outrageous craft projects that would take me a week to put together, and she got the wrong mama for that! 

We didn't finish the whole book last year, so we will start with the remaining stories this year before moving on to the new one I purchased.

Each week we read a different fairy tale/folktale. Each story has a little book included that I would copy for her. We also checked different versions of each story out of the library. This was definitely our favorite part. There are so many different tellings of these old stories, and there are also parodies of the stories. Our favorite was the Three Little Pigs. We found The Three Little Pigs: An Architectural Tale at the library, and it became one of our favorites. It has famous works of art and landmarks throughout the book, so we were able to enjoy the story on different levels. It was like a high brow version of Where's Waldo. :)
 

We read a different version each day, and then we did the corresponding projects and crafts. The stories came with word books to help her learn some new words as an emergent reader. Sometimes there were sequencing projects; sometimes we created the title character. There were lots of different ways to apply the story in meaningful ways. When we had our open house this spring, she was very proud to display her pocket book, even in its incomplete form.

Those are wheat stalks she painted.

We are planning to use more pockets this year. Little Bear has one on Newberry award winning books. Tiny Dancer has one on more folktales and one on Nursery Ryhmes. And we have a book on the Plymouth Colony that we will probably save for the following year, when we hit that time period in history.

Kindergarten Plans

The beginning of school is still about a month away for us, but I am busy getting things ready. Admittedly, I am a little nervous about schooling all three of them this year. I'm not entirely sure how it will work out logistically, so I am trying to be as prepared and organized as possible going into the year.

I have the materials we are planning to use for kindergarten, for Tiny Dancer. It's always exciting to have new boxes of books arrive at our house!

We are major readers in our home. We just got some new bookshelves for all of our books, and we are constantly at our check-out limit at the library. With that in mind, we will be doing LOTS of read-alouds and fun activities to go along. One thing we will do is literature pockets. We started working with them last year, and we LOVED them! They are definitely on our list for this year.

 She is learning to read now, but it has taken some time to find something that works for her. She is actually a very good reader, but she has little confidence in herself. What has clicked is Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. They aren't kidding about the easy part! I love the way it's laid out. The program introduces new sounds, not letter names, every couple of lessons. There is a focus on rhyming, sounding out each bit of the word, and there is a little bit of writing. She likes reading the little stories and talking about the pictures that go along. You can also go onto the Donna Young website to find printable handwriting pages that correspond.

We are also going to work our way through the Horizons phonics and reading program. I have never used Horizons before, and it doesn't fit in with our classical approach, but she wanted some fun workbooks. I appreciate that it is slightly more advanced. She does not need to start out learning each letter, so why start there?

We'll throw in some Bob readers and other readers left over from her brothers. 

We're also going to use Horizons for math. Again, she wanted a fun workbook, and I appreciate that it is more advanced than many of the other kindergarten programs. I wanted to find something at her level, and I think this fits the bill.

For some hands-on fun, we're going to work with Cuisinaire rods. I think she'll like doing some different activities with these.

Science for everyone this year is biology. We're going to start by learning about animals, then move on to the human body, and we will finish the year with plants. We will mostly read lots of books, craft, and have a nature journal. She loves taking pictures, so I may let her create some sort of photo book throughout the year.

And then otherwise, we will do some seasonal lapbooks. We have had fun with those in the past, so I think we'll use those again. I just need to be organized and get them printed and sorted while it's still summer!

Last year we used activity bags  to keep her occupied during school time. I think we will pull some of those out again this year.

And that's it! Kindergarten at the Oak House Academy!