They make more than one sound?!?!

So the last couple weeks in our phonics lessons we are learning that some letters make more than one sound....some even make three! This concept totally rocked Annabelle's world and I realized that we are going to spend some time on this. I don't know why I was thinking that she would be all accepting of this. She's a little wary of change and had slight OCD tendencies (I mean the girl has a specific order for her blankets....and will let me know at 3am if they are out of order). So I scrambled around online and came up with a few trays to hopefully begin helping us with this concept. I started with the vowels A and E.

This one is sorting objects by sound. There are long A, short A, long E, and short E objects in the box. The objects all BEGIN with the sound she is listening for.
While reading another blog, I stumbled upon this really cool website called Super Teacher Worksheets. This site has some really great worksheets AND they're free. :) The couple that I printed have to do with short vs. long E and .....
....short vs. long A. These objects don't necessarily begin with the letter, but just have the sound in it. Eventually these will get mixed together.
The next thing that we will be dealing with in the next couple of weeks is the silent E. Why.....why do we have silent letters in this language? Knife.....seriously? Once she starts sounding out CVC words this will make more sense to her. This great worksheet is from one of the Ready2Read units from The Moffatt Girls. These are great units and are also FREE. Go check them out. I plan on using a whole lot of their resources.
These flashcards will be helpful for the long A sound and reinforcing the silent E. These are printed from one of my very first original resources Latternfish. We will also be using various worksheets from there too.
In addition to these trays we will also use Starfall.com (we have a membership), and our GeoSafari Phonics Pad (and heavens no we didn't pay that much for it). Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking up to Homeschool Creations and for the first time Sunday Showcase, Montessori Monday and ABC and 123 head on over to check out what others are doing. :)

Learning to Work Independantly

I worked on new ways to help Annabelle cope with working independently today during our morning school time. This is the time when she works on language arts. I think that with time this will eventually go much more smoothly. At least today her attitude was MUCH better.

We have books that she will work out of most days. I wanted her to be able to know where to stop without me having to check on her. (Even though she comes to show me her book after every little step she does...we will work on that next).
Here is my solution for her. I printed off a clip art stop sign, laminated it, and then put it on the page that she is to stop on. She works each page until she sees the sign. She really thought that this was great.
This is our first day working in the Explode the Code book so I needed to help her with the directions. Other than that she worked very well by herself. I took this picture while I was helping Asa. Most of the time I would have to be solely paying attention to her in order for her to feel confident about doing work like this. A step in the right direction!
Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking up to Homeschool Creations. :)

Language Arts

This was our first week of Language Arts! I don't know if I will post every week on this, but I wanted to blog about the way that I presented Annabelle's work to her. On a side note....these lessons were a CHORE. She really, really does not like copywork/handwriting practice. I'm hoping that because it was her first week and it was something new she will figure out that it isn't so bad. A lot of it has to do with the fact that she forms her letters backwards. Example: When writing a lower case 'a' she will start at the bottom of the circle and go clockwise to complete the circle. This week we worked on forming letter properly, and she really had a hard time retraining her hand.

Each day she would have a couple worksheets on a tray that she would come in and complete on her own. After the handwriting page she would be done holding the pencil. I gave her a dot marker to complete the second 'Aa' search. The pencil and the dot marker are on the tray before she starts so that this is an independent activity. This is a hard concept for her to get her mind around seeing how I've never had her work completely independent of me before.
Dotting her Aa's.
Another activity that was set up for her this week. Making an 'Aa' collage.

But by far the most fun that she had was using her GeoSafari Phonics Pad. So glad that we got this. It is the perfect reward for her after completing her handwriting work. Bonus: She's learning while she's using it! It doesn't get much better than that. :)
All in all it was a fairly successful week. Included in our LA time is a short lesson on the letter (she pretty much knows her letters and there sounds. There is a 13 week review on them in the curriculum I'm using which I'm ok with because it will just reinforce what she already knows).

The hardest part of it all was fitting it into our daily schedule/rhythm. I'm already trying to figure out when we're going to fit math into the equation. It will all work out in the end. :) Happy blogging!

jess_hak
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