kirchara

For English reading & writing, I highly recommend Logic of English Foundations. The books, workbooks, sandpaper cards & game cards come in manuscript OR cursive. The game cards are print + manuscript OR print + cursive.

My six-year-old did Level A and 25% of Level B before kindergarten. He's most likely beyond Level B now, but we're going through it anyway this summer to make sure his foundation is solid. You won't need levels C & D unless you're homeschooling, because their kindergarten and first grade teachers will take over teaching them reading.

Foundations can be overwhelming if it’s your first time teaching kids reading/writing. Otherwise, it’s designed to be open-and-go. It’s pricey, but it teaches reading AND writing AND spelling. Both Brooks and I find the workbooks, games & activities engaging.

Here’s my low-budget recommendation: Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading. I vastly prefer it over Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which has nonsensical/uninspiring sentences and passages. When using EZ Lessons with River, I ended up making my own sentences (mostly Curious George stories). If you're going to spend that much time and effort, you might as well go with Ordinary Parents' Guide instead.

☆ 08/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

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Cathy Duffy reviews Foundations (Logic of English): One of her top picks

“Foundations is a little more advanced than some other programs if you begin with A and B at kindergarten level. […] A covers some first-grade level standards as well as those for kindergarten while B covers even a few standards for second grade.”

Cathy Duffy reviews The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading

“The only extras you need along with this book are flashcards and a magnetic board with alphabet letters or tiles.”

P.S. It might cost you $0 to use Ordinary Parent’s Guide because your library probably has a copy in circulation.

P.P.S. Although I highly recommend All About Spelling, I feel All About Reading is nowhere as comprehensive as Logic of English Foundations.

(Originally posted on July 2, 2017)

Even though they're 4.5 years apart, I have been teaching River and Brooks Mandarin at the same time. Ideally, I should have had Brooks learn Mandarin the moment he turned four, but I started teaching him reading (in English) instead.

We use Better Chinese's My First Chinese Words because they are targeted to non-Mandarin speakers. In contrast, SageBooks (Hong Kong publisher) require the students to be Mandarin/Chinese speakers. (SageBooks are like BOB books in that they teach children how to read).

I try to do Mandarin two, three times a week. I read one sentence and each child repeat after me. We do two 8-page picture books each session. Brooks usually has the attention span for one picture book but not two.

So far we have done six sessions. In between sessions, I have J independently listen and repeat after the included CD.

Brooks often acts silly and intentionally gives the wrong answers (e.g. "This is my grandfather" instead of "This is my father.") Usually I end up focusing on River when Brooks has the sillies.

As expected, Brooks' pronunciation is just beautiful. Being older, River has a harder time with pronunciation. (When River was four, his Mandarin accent was practically perfect too. Once he started kindergarten, we got busy with reading/writing/spelling/poetry/etc. and stopped doing Mandarin).

I was afraid that River, who just turned nine, would find the books boring because they’re a bit childish, but he has been motivated so far. Earlier today, he asked me to do Mandarin.


☆ 06/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

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If we do this three times a week, we should be done in a year; two times a week, a year and a half.

My tentative lesson map:

( Read more... )

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List of the 36 book titles: ( Read more... )

I told J that in Shakespeare, comedies mean happy endings, and therefore there’s always a wedding in Act V. I gave them the example of Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Me: "How about Twelfth Night? Who do you think get married in Act V?"

J: "Olivia and Cesario."

Olivia/Cesario's Willow Cabin speech must have made quite an impact on them ;-)

I have been using Ken Ludwig’s How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare with J (then-7-y.o.) since summer 2015. They have learned passages from MND and Twelfth Night (Orsino's "If music be the food of love," Viola's "Conceal me what I am," and the willow cabin speech.) The book also provides summarized plot of the plays for context.

J did memorize several poems before we dove into Shakespeare. Both of us knew that they were perfectly capable of memorizing entire poems, including long ones.

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☆ 04/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

I came across June Oberlander’s Slow and Steady Get Me Ready in a blog post about making room time CDs for little ones. We had the opportunity to try out one of the activities* earlier today.

Instead of making a cardboard egg puzzle, we simply used colorful plastic Easter eggs. I set one egg on a "wall" (a heavy book standing on its side), then made the egg fall and come apart while singing this rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not put Humpty together again.

My two-year-old Brooks quickly took over, making the eggs fall and "break" and putting them together again. When the eggs fall, he would exclaim "Oop!" because Brooks is one dramatic toddler.

For extra verisimilitude, you/your kid can decorate the plastic egg with goggly eyes/sticker eyes and mouth.

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ETA 04/13/15: Brooks put playdoh in one end of the plastic egg to make it a wobbly egg. After Humpty fell and broke, he said "egg!," and gave it to me to "eat." X-D

* Age 2 - Week 1

☆ 02/100 moments in multiples of 50 words