2 weeks in 1: Knowing What Your Child Can Handle

We've started doing two weeks in one as far as the official Sonlight P4/5 with Kindergarten Readers curriculum goes. My decision to do this is based on Gilgamesh's incredibly fast progress, and his recent boredom with some of the busy work.

The funny thing about busy work is that it's not busy work unless you already know the material. Otherwise, it's just called practice. But there's nothing more frustrating for a child than being forced to do worksheet after worksheet of tedious stuff he knows backwards and forwards.... except perhaps being forced to do work that's too advanced. Either way is not good.

That's what I love about homeschooling. Who knows a child better than his mother? Especially during the early years of life! Mom-as-teacher can look at progress/past work/attitude and determine what would best motivate and facilitate learning in her child. So that's what I did.

Gilgamesh is reading at a first grade level.

Let me just say that again because I'm really proud of him:

Gilgamesh is reading at a first grade level... at four and a half years old.

I already knew he was doing amazingly well when he started asking me about apostrophes and contractions and pointing out commas whenever he found them. But Sonlight has a nifty little Quick Reading Assessment on their website. The word lists are representative of words the public school children in each grade are reading.

When I saw that they were recommending the first grade readers for Gilgamesh, I was 1) super proud and 2) really not that surprised, considering he's already reading the kindergarten readers fluently. The next steps in reading are some of the most challenging with hard-to-remember rules and big words that take some serious sounding out, but Gilgamesh will soon be ready. He's not yet, which is why I chose to accelerate the current curriculum rather than abandon it.

Since the very light preschool program we're using doesn't actually do math and definitely doesn't bog down the preschool mind, we're perfectly fine in reading more material each day and doing more writing practice. The increased rate of practice has been great for Gilgamesh, since it's always new, and kids (at least mine) love novelty. We're still doing art projects, reading about natural science, and looking things up on youtube and Google images when he's curious, so there's no feeling of being rushed, really.

But we are covering two weeks of the curriculum in one, so by his fifth birthday, he'll be all set to start Sonlight's Core A (kindergarten) with Grade 1 Readers. I'm very excited for him because of his pure love of learning. Anybody who thinks I'm pushing him to read earlier would be dead wrong. Everything he does, reading-wise, is his idea. But I definitely prepped the soil.

Here's what I have done:

• Insisted on reading aloud with him every day, whether it's a chapter from a chapter book or several picture books.
• Let him point out the sight words he'd been learning on the pages of actual books.
• Purchased and used Phonics readers (Disney makes these, and so do the merchandisers of just about every kid show you can dream of, like Dora, Diego, Cat in the Hat, etc.) We got ours at Costco for under ten bucks.
• Exposed him early and often to TV and videos that encourage reading: Super Why (Super Readers), Word World, Meet the Letters, Meet the Sight Words 1, 2, and 3, Leapfrog Letter Factory, Word Factory, etc.
• Kept flashcards in the house and wasn't afraid to use them.
• Let him see me reading. Encouraged his dad to let the boys see him reading.
• Talked about new books like they were ice cream.

The rest was all him. My natural love of books shines through in my life and attitudes. That added to kids' general natural curiosity and desire to be like the adults in their lives combines to create fertile soil for learning to read. 

I'm not saying we've never had struggles, like letter reversal, dropping beginning consonants while sounding out words, or sounding out the first few letters only to guess haphazardly at the whole word (that's my favorite). Everybody has challenges while they learn to read. I'm just grateful for Gilgamesh's natural love of learning and intense interest in the written word. I recognize not all children are built like him. I hope this little list is encouraging to parents who aren't sure how to proceed with introducing their kids to reading. My suggestion: dive into the deep end and keep swimming. Kids are hardwired to learn language. The time is now. 

[end inspirational speech]

Most of all, remember that as a super-involved parent, only you and your spouse know what's best for your child. If it's skipping the first grade to go into third, ignore the judgers. If it's taking it super slow to make sure he has a stable foundation for the rest of his life, ignore the judgers. Focus on what you know is right, and if it's not as clear as a bell...

Prayer works.

Good luck and enjoy!

Homeschooling Leftovers

Being the Easter Bunny

Today (Friday) was Leftovers Day. It's leftovers on the meal plan and leftovers in our school week. Gilgamesh warmed over the previous day's bear discussions and made a meal out of it: brought me a picture of a bear going into his cave, surrounded by snow. He explained that it was winter and the bear was going inside to sleep. Who needs testing when he volunteers to show me how much he's retained of yesterday's lesson?

We read The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss together. I realized today that he has the first several pages pretty much memorized. But I also watched him sound out a few tough words. He noted every comma (pause) and period (full stop) on the page. He looked for apostrophes, but we didn't find any in that book. There are a lot of "it is" and "cannot" long forms in there. He also practiced writing earlier in the day, including asking me how to spell computer. He's doing this more and more, asking how words are spelled. It's amazing how much he retains, too.

He chose to watch Leapfrog's Math Adventure to the Moon, which is great for introducing patterns, shapes, and counting, all of which he has already mastered. But it does have counting to 100 by tens, and that was good practice. Later, on a family drive, he counted the red cars we passed. Always learning and practicing!

He went camping in his tent and helped me a lot with his little brother, Alastor. While Alastor was down for a nap, Gilgamesh put on a Berenstain Bears movie about Spring, the Easter bunny, and baseball season. He asked me to help him make bunny ears. I did so on the condition that he clean up his building blocks which were all over the floor (he'd been making a baseball field out of them). Once he had his ears in place, he asked for a carrot. Cutest Easter Bunny I've ever seen (see picture above).

The thing I love about the movie he was watching is that it teaches so many concepts, like the seasons, what would happen if they stopped, and how animals often have babies in the Spring (Brother gets a new little Sister in the film). I took the moment to talk about being a good big brother, and I told him I was proud of how he took care of Alastor. Sometimes he tries to take too much care of him, like when it wasn't lunch time and Gilgamesh got out two bowls and the leftover spaghetti for them to share. He even got a small fork for Alastor, which I thought was very thoughtful. We put it all away anyway. :)

The making-change board game I ordered from amazon, Buy it Right, arrived today! We'll play it as a family tomorrow. Gilgamesh wanted to play it immediately, but Daddy came home from work early and wanted to take us out to dinner (so much for leftovers [not that I'm complaining!]). So we ended up at Chili's, where Gilgamesh circled the things he wanted (one from each colored box on the kid's menu) and then tried to share his pizza with everyone.

Alastor loved it when we did a repeat of Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, the action song that had us jumping and touching our toes, pretending to climb stairs, etc. He's been copying his older brother a lot lately, including trying to write with crayons. He'll even say letter names while he scribbles just like Gilgamesh does when he's sounding out a word to write. Of course, Alastor's are limited to, "T, A, T, B, A, T." But it's still adorable. He's started stringing words together, like "Bye, bye, Daddy," and "No, it's mine," or "There it is!" Alastor also likes pretending to read. While Daddy read Wocket in my Pocket to Gilgamesh, Alastor sat on a nearby chair and read Goodnight Moon to himself.

We spent some time in a sporting goods store stocking up for an upcoming camp trip. The fire starting striker set we bought made for a great pre-bedtime sparks show on the concrete outside (it was pitch dark which made it even cooler). We talked about fire safety and the proper place for a fire.

So tomorrow we'll go to the park to play baseball and also play Buy it Right. Looking forward to a chill day with the family. I hope you have a great weekend, too!


Any plans?