We finished up our first week using Sonlight's Language Arts 2 material...and I was in love with it on the first day. I wanted to wait till I actually made it through the week before sharing my thoughts here on the blawg.
Language Arts has been very light, and not a regular thing, since my 3 youngest students were not quite reading. We are getting close to the end of Headsprout phonics, so I felt it was time to bring in some LA. I puzzled over which LA program, and then realized the answer was probably Sonlight. Kind of an out of the box thing, to order the LA portion when I am not using the rest of the program, but hey- I live life on the edge...
Soo, Sunday night I pulled out my binder and looked to see what we would be doing on Monday with our new LA and *readers... :) (It's sort of weird the way I love new books and new programs..but hey, it could be shoes or bags...)
It was just the right sort of work and lightness, we had a copywork passage (taken from the reader assignment, sigh-I love when things are inter-woven!) and then a note suggesting I write a few compound words on index cards, explain what a compound word is, and then have the student(s) put them together. They even gave me a list of words. So I did it, because it was the small kind of project I can handle....and then I tucked the cards away in my binder pocket.
The kids had a ball, and it even became a competition to see who could make the most words. Teddy was in the lead right till the end (which made me very happy because he is our struggling learner and I love moments when he can shine), and then Amie swept in and won by one word.
These are the kind of activities I love to do, it reminded me of a Montessori- education way of doing things- I love to do things like this, but I do them very sporadically because I am 1) either feeling behind in everything, 2) very busy and just forget, or 3) I don't plan ahead.
It was wonderful having it scheduled for me.
The next day we had a portion from the reader to unscramble- short and sweet! And then the next day we had a lesson on descriptive words and answered some questions about an animal they would like to write about; a pre-writing lesson. *here are Teddy and Amie hard at work on their adjectives...
Friday was the big writing assignment day, they took their list of adjectives and wrote about the animal they were describing. *Here is Demi-Sky's on the left, his student activity page for the week is on the right.
I really like that we do a little bit of work everyday, so they don't get burnt- out.
The Regular Readers-2 are just right for Amie, she reads them fluently but tires quickly with it. Demi is zooming through them and begs for more- which is perfect, because I anticipated this and ordered him the Intermediate Readers-2 schedule/study guide to add, in addition to the regular readers. Teddy is floundering a bit. He has an auditory processing disorder-and has come a long way since being pulled from public school last year, he has been doing great with phonics type readers...but the reading for this program is from The Beginners Bible, and is not limited to an easy phonics list..and he is not able to read as many pages as are scheduled.
I waited, watched and worked with him this week..and decided to go ahead and order him the Sonlight Reader's schedule for core 1. I am going to keep him with the
Language Arts 2 portion..and just hold his hand with it- because I think he needs the stretching it will give him with writing. But, I thought about it a lot, and decided that we want to foster a love of reading for him, not frustration or defeat- so the reader's for core 1 will be at a level he can triumph with. I love the fact that Sonlight has so many different reading and Language Arts levels within the different cores, it makes it easy to move the kids up and down if needed, but still keep them in the same history year...which we will be doing next year. It's decided, we are doing Sonlight complete cores next year with all the kids.
I will share more with you on planning, what the schedules are like and such, as I go along and figure it all out.
This week was a really fun week for me, Language Arts wise.