Category Archives: Homeschooling

Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons-Does it Really Work?

Book Reviews, Homeschooling, Reading
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Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons

So I bought the book “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” last year for my 5 year old, Ekid. I had read the rave reviews on Amazon.com and decided to buy it. I never used a book like this for Nboy, but he was always more interested in practicing reading and writing than Ekid is and so I didn’t feel I needed a “curriculum” to teach him. Ekid on the other hand needs more to keep him interested.

So this book has 100 lessons and claims that your child will be able to read and write by the end of it. Each lesson goes over sounds and writing those sounds at the end of the lesson. One of the first sounds is the short “A” sound as in “cat”. You put your finger on the first ball and slide it on the arrow to the ball under the letter and you have your child say the sound slowly, drawing it out as in “aaaaaa” as you slide your finger to the end of the arrow. They learn to say the sound slowly at first and then you have them “say it fast”.

Each lesson progresses and a new sound is added every couple lessons. There is a lot of repetition in order for your child to remember each sound from lesson to lesson.

Eventually they start putting letters together to form words, and then this progresses to putting the words together in short sentences with a picture for reading comprehension.

Now for my review:

I LOVE this book! Ekid is doing so well with it, and he really enjoys it. He has very little trouble remembering the sounds he learned in the previous lesson when we get to the next lesson because there is so much repetition in learning each sound. We would have been completely through the book by now, but we only did a few lessons last year and then stopped because at the time he just wasn’t quite as interested. But now we are on lesson 16 and he is able to read the short sentence that has been in the last couple lessons by sounding it out. I really think Siegfried Engelmann did an excellent job with this book.

Even if you are not homeschooling, “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” is still a wonderful book to get to give your child a head start in reading and writing before entering school, and it gives parent and child a nice chance to spend some time together learning.

3rd Day of Homeschooling down and Nboy Needs Glasses???

Getting Organized, Homeschooling,
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Well, today went ok. We had a hard time getting going this morning, but finally got sat down for a little devotional on the livingroom floor. Today’s devotional was from Daniel 2:20-22. We mostly focused on vs. 22 “He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.”

I told them that God knows everything and he reveals the things we think we’ve kept to ourselves, secret things, but God knows. If it’s sin, he will reveal it, whether openly, or to us so that we come face to face with it and have to make a choice whether to repent or not. The light dwelleth with God, and as it says in 1 John 1:5 “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” . So when we walk with God, we walk in the light and our deeds are made known. If we sin and continue in it, we walk in darkness away from God because we don’t want our sins to be known, though as Daniel said, God knows what is in the darkness also, so we cannot hide from him and he already knows, so we might as well repent of our sins and come to him whether we need to come to him for salvation, or if we are already a child of God, but we need to come to Him for forgiveness so our fellowship with him can be restored.

Math went well. I ended up doing 2 lessons with Nboy since they were pretty easy review lessons in the Abeka Curriculum 3.  Ekid just practised tracing and writing numbers again and I got pretty flustered when he didn’t want to listen to how I was showing him to do it. He likes to do things his own way, so he can be stubborn! But he finally wrote a couple of the numbers we worked on correctly and we stopped there.

Reading with Nboy was great, though he had a hard time with his vocab words and complaining quite a lot about writing all of them. I only have him write them one time each for now. But I think I know what his issue is now…..

Ekid did awesome with his reading, in Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and wanted to move on to the next lesson, but I told him we would do the next tomorrow. He is very excited to learn how to read!

So that’s all we did today. We didn’t do history since I had some other things I needed to take care of and we got started late, but it was a satisfying educational time.

I’d also like to add that I got a good deal of cleaning done today and my dining area looks tons better. The boys helped me pick up toys and trash and then I rearranged and put the little round dining table in the center of the floor after I swept and mopped, and opened up some space along the wall where it used to be. So I was able to put the kids easel along the wall now and Cman’s little desk too. I still have some decluttering to do, but it looks much better. My livingroom is liveable now too and the boys desk is slowly getting cleared off. They have had room to do their work on it the last two days though, so that’s been nice.

I’m continually getting back up and trying again with the whole organizing thing!

So about Nboy. Well, he has been complaining lately that he keeps having to squint and that his eyes always feel dry. He also gets headaches quite a lot toward the evening or after watching tv, playing on the computer or reading. So I think  he has inherited my curse of bad eyesight. I’ll be making an eye doctor appointment tomorrow for him, but I think that this must be the reason he gets cranky so often this past few months, and he doesn’t like to sit and read for very long, though he loves it when I read books to him and he reads extremely well. I’m hoping if it is his eyesight, that once he gets glasses, his attitude will improve quite a lot. It definitely makes you cranky when you get headaches a lot, even if it’s just a constant slight discomfort.

Well, that’s day 3 of our Homeschooling journey for this year! Hopefully tomorrow will go even better.

Day 2 of Homeschooling Report…..

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I am happy to say that today went much better than yesterday. I got up at 8am as planned, and even though the boys got up a bit later than I wanted, we still got started by 9:30.

We started with a devotional in 1 Corinthians 10:30-32 with the focus being on verse 31 “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”  I thought this was a great lesson to start our school year, especially after yesterday’s meltdown with Nboy. I told them that it means that whatever we do, whether it be playing or doing school work or eating, we should do it for the Lord. So we should have a good attitude and always try our best even if we don’t like what we are doing, because we are doing it for the Lord and that should make us happy because it makes Him happy!

I had to remind them of that a few times this morning, but it seemed to work. I also reminded them that if they did not do their work well and with a good attitude, then they would not be playing games on the Xbox 360 or the computer later……..That may have helped too…..

Next was Math, going over flashcards with Nboy, reviewing telling time and review place value.  I was going to have Ekid do some first grade math in one of his workbooks, but then realized that he really needs to work on writing his numbers since he kept writing some of them backwards. So instead I broke out the writing tablet and taped it down to his desk at an angle for left handers, and wrote the numbers for him to trace and write correctly. This has always proven to be difficult for him and I’m wondering if most left handers have a harder time learning to write correctly. But I am looking at the handwriting book that comes with the A2 (Accelerated Achievement) curriculum and thinking I will begin working with both of them using that book. I’m determined to have my boys have much better handwriting than I do :)

Then after Math, I had Nboy read the whole story that he didn’t finish yesterday out of his McGuffy’s 3rd Ecclectic reader, and he did so much better. I had to make sure he paused properly at periods and commas, but he was able to read most of the bigger words and only had a little trouble on a couple of them. I like that these readers have the spelling and vocab list after each lesson. So I wrote the word list on paper for him to write each word one time, as long as he wrote it nicely.

Then while he was working on that, I sat Ekid down and we did the next lesson in the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. He did wonderfully, and I am confident that by the end of the book, he will be reading quite well! It really is a great book and I love the way it teaches reading. It also has a writing time at the end of each lesson. Any parent really could easily teach their child to read well with this book!

So then we took a break about eleven until after I fixed my man lunch (he comes home for lunch), and the we continued on to history and started where we left off with Leif Ericson traveling down to Massachusetts and coming on land. He and his men apparently built huts there and gathered grape vines and timber, stayed for a little while and then sailed home and told noone about it. So noone else heard about this new land until Christopher Columbus. I am enjoying doing the history lessons and just reading through the book and looking up pictures and maps on the internet, and I think Nboy is staying interested too as long as we don’t go too long. Ekid gets a bit bored, but I’ll try and find some videos that will be interesting for him to watch. I’m not too concerned with history for kindergarten yet anyway. I figure he’ll pick up some things listening in here and there for now.

So that’s it. We stopped at that for today and I let them play games for awhile while I took a little nap with Cman after lunch.

Onward to tomorrow!

First Day Kindergarten and Third Grade Homeschooling….

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Well, I haven’t been posting on homeschooling much leading up to the first day of school. I’ve just been so busy with other things. But I will tell you how the first day of homeschooling went today….

Not too good! First of all, I got to bed super late last night because of some exciting developments which I will try to share with you soon! I will say that I was doing some research on how to use Quickbooks and trying to find tutorials on Youtube. And then as soon as I got into bed, Ekid woke up….he had wet the bed…. Grrrr! So I had to clean him up and get him back to bed. Then awhile after I finally got to sleep, Cman wakes up, so I bring him in bed with us. So instead of getting up at 8am in order to get the boys up and start our school day, I ended up sleeping till a little after 9, and still, I was sooooo tired!

So then, the boys were watching OPB programs and I just “couldn’t” turn it off when they had finally eaten breakfast and I was ready to start the day which was about 10am. So I figured I’d let them finish watching since the hubby was going to be home around 11am for lunch.

After I fixed my man lunch, and the beloved program was over….. I quizzed Nboy on a little math and went over his times tables a bit and then I sat Nboy down to work on his 3rd grade reading out of the McGuffey’s Third Eclectic Reader. Talk about whining! He reads really well, but I could not get him to read nicely this morning! It was that scratchy, whiny voice and with me getting mad and him not wanting to read, he started to cry…so I forcefully closed the book, and told him to go lay down and take a nap(which he said he wanted to do anyway).

So while he is in his bed, I started Ekid (Kindergarten) on his Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  He did really, really well. We started in on the 9th chapter where we left off a few months ago and he picked it right up as if we hadn’t stopped. We didn’t work on the handwriting because their wall desk is still completely cluttered.

So about the time we finished that, Nboy comes out of his room and says he’s feeling better now and wants to learn about the vikings. I had told him yesterday that we were going to learn about some vikings that discovered America since we are starting on American History this year.

So I have my Accelerated Achievement  cd that has grades k-12 on one cd, and we started reading about the vikings and Eric the Red and up to where they were trying to find Greenland sailing from Iceland and were caught in a storm and got off course and ended up along the coast of North America. They saw the land that it was green and full of trees and knew it wasn’t Greenland, so after 2 days, they turned back and sailed to Greenland and never came ashore here!

Anyway, I incorporated some maps to show the route of the voyage, and we looked up some pictures of what vikings wore and what their ships looked like.

That part of our schooling worked out well and kept at least Nboy interested.

But that was about it. Though Nboy did get on the computer and started typing a story. I really need to find a typing program to teach him how to type correctly too.

So the plan for tomorrow is to get started on math with my Abeka Curriculum. I think Ekid knows enough to start first grade math instead of Kindergarten, and Nboy is on 3rd grade. I still haven’t ordered their workbooks, so we will just have to skip the workbook work for now.

Then we’ll do reading, some more history, writing and P.E.  I think that’ll be it for tomorrow. I need to get together what I’m going to do for Science and Geography and then we’ll start on those next week. I’m thinking about only doing Science twice a week, and probably Geography also.

And once I get some piano lessons ordered, I will start teaching them piano and we’ll also do some singing, and art. Chris will probably start giving Nboy and maybe even Ekid a guitar lesson once a week also.

Ahhh, there’s just so many things to do!  I’ve really got to get this organization thing down!

So, do you homeschool? If so, how did your first day back to school go?

 

Our New Homeschooling Wall Desk

Homeschooling 2nd grade….Finished!

Homeschooling, Vacation Time
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Our New Homeschooling Wall Desk
Our new homeschooling wall desk

So we finished our 2nd year of homeschooling and Nboy will be going into 3rd grade this fall! I just can’t believe it! Ekid will start Kindergarten and Baby, well he’s still potty training :)   It feels good to be done with the school year though. We had a rough year this year and had to play catch up after I closed my candle business, but we got it done and that’s what matters.

I’m looking forward to my new business venture (Higher Focus Web Design) and hopefully getting back to blogging more. I am determined to make a good income from home and so far I have been seeing an increase in my current income from Adsense from my different websites that I have.

So anyway, I think next year will go more smoothly as I said in my last post. I definitely want to have a home business that will work well with homeschooling and that I can stop what I’m doing at the drop of a hat if need be lol.I have a good feeling about this coming year. I’ll keep you all posted.

So what are your plans for summer vacation? Go ahead and share in the comments

We are looking forward to Vacation Bible School and then Church Camp after that! Nboy will be in a cabin this year since he is 8 years old, so Chris and I will only have 2 kids in the tent with us…Whoohoooo! :)  Can’t wait till camp!

Well, it’s awfully late, yikes, 3am! I keep getting engrossed in working on my websites and staying up way too late. Night All!

Homeschooling-Catching up

Homeschooling
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Well, it’s almost 2am and I am still awake. Was planning on going to bed early tonight since the kids all got to sleep earlier than normal (a little before 10) And the hubs went to bed earlier than normal (around 11:30) since he has to leave for work early in the morning. Sooooo, I’ve been having a pretty relaxing evening…Yay me :) But I’ve been having such a nice quiet time that I can’t help but want to stay up!

But anyway, that is not what I was going to t write about tonight. So Nboy is homeschooling 2nd grade this year and we had quite a lot of set backs earlier in the school year. My candle business kind of took over everything until after Christmas, and then I decided to quit that. And so we’ve been playing catch up with his schooling since then.

I am very happy to say that he finished his 2nd Mcguffy reader about a month ago and has been doing at least 2 lessons a day in his Abeka math workbook. This past week he has even been getting his workbook out before I tell him to and starts working on it on his own because he wants to get done with it! lol He said the other day that he wanted to work on math all day! And he actually did about 4 lessons and a test! And then we did a couple lessons and a test the next day. And of course he gets 100% on nearly every test. I love it!

It is nice when you see your child learning things and understanding things that you thought a year ago, might be hard for him to understand, but it is amazing to see how their understanding grows from year to year.

Anyway, so we should be done with math by next month, which is awesome! And for 3rd grade, I anticipate that he will fly through those lessons and be done even sooner since we won’t have the distraction of my candle business in the fall. Although, we will have Ekid doing 1st grade, so that will take up a bit more time on  my part. But when Nboy will be able to do much of his work on his own after the initial instruction.

So onward and upward!