What We’ve Read Aloud So Far…

From Core K:

My Father’s Dragon ~ We all loved this imaginative read about a boy who rescues a dragon from an island full of wild animals.

The Family Under the Bridge ~ Sweet story about three homeless kiddos who soften the heart of a homeless man.  Perfect read-aloud while we were studying France.

The Boxcar Children ~ We actually listened to this one on an audio cd that we borrowed from the library.  The kiddos were already familiar with The Boxcar children {and I remember loving the series from when I was a kiddo}. 

B is for Betsy ~ My dd6 especially appreciated mama choosing a book with a girl as the main character…it seems that many of our read alouds have more boys as the main characters.

The Apple and the Arrow ~ Talk about courage and trust…we loved this story about the legend of William Tell.

From Core 2

Red Sails to Capri ~ We read this while we were studying Italy…great book that we all enjoyed.

Ginger Pye ~ Another audio cd from the library…My animal loving dd6 really liked this book {the boys did too}.

The Minstrel in the Tower ~ A short chapter book about a courageous brother and sister during the times of the crusades.

Castle Diary~ We found an oversized, full-color version of this book at the library.  The kiddos loved looking at the pictures while I read aloud.  This was an excellent addition to our study of medieval times.

The Cricket in Times Square ~ We listened to the audio cd from the library.  I love it when I can find an audio cd of a book on our read-aloud list…then I can listen along while I work :).

The Door in the Wall ~ Another great addition to our history studies.  Excellent story about a courageous young boy during the middle ages.

The Apprentice ~ Great book about an young apprentice during the Renaissance period.  This book was a great precursor to another book we just finished reading…

Michelangelo ~ Great picture book about Michelangelo.  We read it in one sitting :) 

Missionary Read Alouds

Catching Their Talk in a Box ~ An excellent read aloud from Sonlight Core 2.  This tells the story of Joy Ridderhof who was led by God to “catch the talk” of people who had no Bible in their own language and put their talk on records so they could hear the Gospel in their own tongue…an amazing book that was enjoyed by all of us.

New Toes for Tia ~ We really enjoyed this short picture book that I had bought from Sonlight many years ago. 

William Tyndale: Queen’s Smuggler ~ an amazing biography about William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English.  This was a part of a unit study product review that I did for the TOS Crew…but it fit perfectly into our history studies.

How All About Spelling Saved My Sanity

When it came time to teach my oldest child {ds8} to read, I didn’t…he basically taught himself.  Don’t get me wrong, I tried to teach him,  but I just got in the way.  When he was ready to learn {around age 5}, I taught him the sounds that the letters made and he was off.  My little guy read everything…and those easy phonetic readers just frustrated him.

Enter dd6…my extremely phonetic child.  Bless her little heart, she has been working so hard on learning to read for the past year…and she has finally gotten to the point where she can read four letter words with blends.  She sounds out every.single.word…even if she just read the word one sentence before :)

We began last year with a gentle phonics program {she was 5 1/2}, we’d sit together on the couch and work on reading every morning ~ but eventually this program began to frustrate both her and me.

Since she already knew all of the letter sounds, I decided that maybe we would just spend time practicing reading…so we moved on to reading through the Bob Books…one at a time.  This approach worked for a while, but we needed something more…

Enter All About Spelling…ahhh, finally something that clicks with my little girl.  Yes, this is technically a spelling program, but it covers phonics so completely that I thought it could serve as a phonics/reading instruction program for my extremely phonetic little girl. 

In the first step of Level One we worked on letter sounds.  After quickly covering all 26 phonograms {she already knew them}, we moved on to segmenting words {listening for and saying every sound in a word}.  We began with words with one sound, then moved on to words with two sounds, and finally words with three sounds.  I think it was this process of learning how to segment a word into its individual sounds that finally made the reading process click for her.

Since August, she has progressed all the way to Step 15…she has conquered the digraphs sh, ch, and th and final blends {blends at the end of a word}.  We are now working on initial blends.

She does an amazing job at the magnet board, she can quickly and easily spell most of the words in her lesson…this then gives her the confidence to read these words in her readers.

And now she has her very own hardback reader…one that corresponds with what she’s learning in her daily lessons ~ The Runt Pig.  She is so excited about this reader that she wants to read a chapter every day.  Each day when we sit down to read after her AAS lesson she calls her brothers over so they can listen in too :)

I am so thankful that dd6’s hard work is paying off…to be honest there were times when I feared that I would never be able to teach my free-spirited red-head to read…and she wanted to read so badly.

Thank you All About Spelling…you helped me teach my daughter to read!