You Can Read!

In struggling with Turbo and school, I resorted to the age-old idea. Find someone who can help!

I asked many, many, many friends/family for their thoughts, suggestions, ideas, ANYTHING! So many good ideas came out of those conversations and brainstorming ideas, that I realized that Homeschooling is not just the mom and dad schooling the kiddos, but EVERYONE in our lives will have some input in some way.

I went back to my most favorite blog/website of a homeschooling mom who was a Kindergarten teacher in her "prior" life, who now schools her 3 kiddos at home. Her two youngest are pretty much the same ages as Turbo and Tank. You can visit her site HERE.

She offers so many great things and has branched off into so many different directions that she has pretty much anything and everything you need. And it is ALL FOR FREE! There are a few sections where she asks for payment, but it is only like $5 or $10. Which is practically nothing.

But I visited her newly written curriculum called, YOU CAN READ. It is a beginning reader curriculum that offers hands on activities for my Turbo to do while introducing 4 new Site Words for each unit. We have been working on this for the past week and have put off our other stuff to get Turbo excited about school again. It has WORKED!

The greatest thing about this is that I found these letter rods that Turbo can build while practicing these words! For $3 at a garage sale last weekend!!



We still do the FIAR off and on and once I get all my books checked out from the library on space, we will begin that as well.

I have decided to continue school through the summer but on more of a low-key basis, as, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, Turbo functions better on a schedule anyway.

Nerf Gun Spelling

Being the end of the school year, Turbo is getting pretty tired of table top work. In fact, I am getting tired of table top work.

So this morning, I decided to shake things up a bit. Using our BOB Books, I put about 12-15 different letters used in the books and asked him to use his Nerf Gun to shoot the letters of the word given to him in order. Then using the window crayons, he was to write the words on the window.

BOB

For our reading portion of school, we have been working through BOB Books. These books are fantastic as it allows Turbo to read an entire book by himself with using only a handful of letters to sound out.

Recently, Turbo has found a new audience! Tank loves to sit next to his big brother while he reads him a book. Turbo beams with pride as Tank snuggles up next to him to listen. Most of the time he sits for the entire book to be read; however, in the video below, he is distracted with a toy. Please don't ask about the monkey on his back. He has this infatuation with this monkey backpack and insists on wearing it daily.

BREAK THROUGH!

Friday last week was an amazing time-schoolwise! Turbo, although begged and pleaded to play computer games first before school, "caved in" and did some table work with me. At first, he was reluctant, but really got into the groove.

We have completed the entire alphabet for capital letters, and are progressing on to the lower case letters. Today's letter was "v". After finishing "v", he decided to continue on to the letter "w". One completed, and practice work was completed, we took to the window with window crayons. We worked on reviewing of letters and numbers and I even through in some number words (two, ten, etc.), each met with no fit or defiance!

Back to the table and it was review of our vocab words. Although his up to like 50 now, we don't review them all, I choose some he knows and then some he struggles with. After that, we read, "Where's Spot?". I am completely aware that he is probably "reading" from rote memory and definitely using picture clues, but he believes that he is "reading" a book. When he asked to read, "Spot Sleeps Over", I was hesitant, but he wanted to so badly. We introduced more words, and he sounded each word out. A lot of sight words were there, so I will probably begin using the 100 word sight list shortly. He did great!

Because he was self-regulated, he didn't bat an eye when I asked him to do some math. Giving him 10 problems of simple addition facts (all under 5 - 4+4, 5+1, 5+4) and using his fingers and nose to count he completed 10 facts in under 2 minutes! Not bad for a young 5-year-old! He completed the math session with practicing writing numbers, then it was off to the computer for some JumpStart games.

I took a long, hot shower while Tank slept.