A Book a Day . . .

keeps, ah, illiteracy away?

The school psychologist referred to his tested reading level as "near genius." I'm not fully sure what that means, but I do know he reads the scriptures out loud much more smoothly than a few adults I've heard at church.
Super K.'s latest habit is reading a book a day. Seriously. Since he brings home the 3rd grade level chapter books, it only takes him about an hour or so after school. Yes, he can read much, much more advanced books, but he likes to choose something he can finish in one sitting. Otherwise, he'll just pick up a different book or start in a different place or skip a few chapters when he gets back to it.
We might want to work on developing taste, though. Monday he brought home Attack of the Shark-Headed Zombies, and didn't start his homework sheets until he was done.

MEP Math

Adding alligator teeth to
the "greater than" sign.

We have discovered MEP Math. The "Mathematics Enhancement Programme" is a little-known British jewel available for free online.
Mia is using Year 1 (Kindergarten). There are 4 days of 45 minute lesson plans per week for 35 weeks, the 5th day being devoted to review (or skipping ahead, if applicable.) I actually have not found the lessons to take nearly that long in our one-on-one setting. Unless she wants to color-in everything on the whiteboard and her worksheet, or wants our counting song played ten times over, we're done in about 20 minutes.
So, what's special about this math program? Well, it's free, for starters (not counting your ink). It doesn't require $60 worth of manipulatives (they have printable cuisenaire rods and suggest using a set of small toys, buttons, shells or other objects as counters). It only requires one worksheet a day, unlike some math programs where all the work is in worksheets. It introduces kinesthetic ideas I hadn't thought of (knock on your desk as many times as I jump. Tell me the opposite word when you catch the ball).

Using shapes from our art box,
we compare quantity.

Year 1 starts with a review of preschool concepts, like "as many as" and position relations. Then it moves into counting and comparing small groups of objects. It uses the traditional greater than/less than/equal to signs. Some of the worksheet problems are logic puzzles. Then it works toward addition of small quantities. By the end of the year students are studying number bonds and calculations up to 20; multiple-step calculations (i.e. 1+4+5=10); addition using traditional numbers and roman numerals pre-algebra, and more advanced logic puzzles.

I printed off the first 30 pages of her practice book (black and white outlines--not too ink heavy), hole-punched them and put them in our "math binder." There's about one page per lesson. Cory saved the first 30 lesson plans as a PDF and downloaded them to my kindle--PDFs are bulky files for Kindles, so I'll delete it when we're ready to download the next 30 lessons. I do need to glance over the lessons in advance, sometimes I need to put something on the whiteboard (or BB as they abbreviate it), or it may call for number cards that I haven't printed yet.

Comparing height of 2 "classmates."

Melissa and Doug Magnet Letters

I've had a bit of curriculum envy this week. I mean, The Ordinary Parent's Guide for Teaching Reading is the most cost effective phonics program in existence, taking a child to a 4th grade reading level for about $20 on Amazon, but my artistic daughter has been very grumpy about reading the pages with no illustrations or color.
Fat Cat Phonics is all cuteness and color, but the starter kit is $200. Ouch. All About Spelling is closer to our price range, being $30 for level one, plus the interactive kit (which you use for all levels). But I'm not quite sure; and, anyway, our budget is spoken for this pay period.
So it's back to whatever I do when the budget trumps an otherwise good idea: use what I have, just more creatively.
I pulled out the old Melissa and Doug magnet letters and arranged them alphabetically on a magnet whiteboard I got at Wal-mart a year ago. Then I turned to lesson 89 in OPG to see which words they used to teach the vowel team "ee." With marker, I wrote two Es on the board. After I reminded Mia what "ee" says, I told her to make it say "see," then "seed." It was a great big colorful hit. After we had gone through the word list, I opened Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop to the "SEE BEE" pages. She breezed through that cheerfully and we were done for the day.

Portable Education

I didn't want Little Nephi's weekly speech therapy sessions to upset our school day--so we brought it with us! Fortunately, no one else seems to have appointments that time of day, so we had the waiting room, complete with table and chairs, to ourselves. I decided to pack for the 3 Rs:

Reading: a lesson from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and 2 pages from a Dora reader.

Writing: a Handwriting Without Tears chalkboard and chalk, plus Kumon handwriting workbook.
Arithmetic: an addition workbook from the Target dollar bin (and we used the chalkboard to practice writing numbers).