The Harvest Moon, Segmenting Phonemes, & Spanish

Week 5: September 16-20

Art and Science

A lot of this week’s activities centered around the harvest moon, which was the topic in Exploring Nature with Children. Fortunately, while making our way home from a family gathering the Friday evening before, we got a great view of the harvest moon, even though our region’s true full moon was on Saturday. That set the stage for this week’s science lesson, and the kids didn’t even need to stay up past their 7:30 bedtime for a late “nature walk.”

Mac isn’t the only one who is in everything we do. Dog-Dog wants to be in the middle of it all too.

We tried our hand at chalk pastels for the very first time. Some time ago, a friend had told me about the You ARE an ARTiST website where you can find video art lessons, and I had forgotten about it until I heard the co-creator talk about it on the Your Morning Basket podcast. There’s a $20 monthly membership that I know nothing about, and honestly, I can’t pay for yet another monthly subscription of something no matter how great it is. (Golly. Homeschooling can be expensive for someone like me who wants all of the best stuff out there. The curriculum was bad enough; I hadn’t considered all the extras that I’d want to get. I know homeschooling doesn’t have to be expensive. But I think I might have expensive taste. Eek.) The good news is there are 100+ free tutorials on the website, and we found a harvest moon one! (Not all of them are videos. The harvest moon tutorial was not.)

The Harvest Moon by Charles Mason, 1872
This painting was incorporated into our science lesson.
(I bet you thought this was Molly’s chalk pastel creation. Ha!)

Reading

Molly has been learning how to blend phonemes into words. When we started this the first or second week of school, I thought she’d never get it. I was frustrated, then later frustrated with myself when she caught on overnight and was suddenly able to blend. This week, she was introduced to segmenting words into separate phonemes (kind of the opposite of blending and what I had been doing; the roles were now reversed). Oh my gosh. She wasn’t getting it at all. Again, I was somewhat frustrated, but I knew that it has to be normal. After all, this is totally new to her and she only turned five last month!

I’m impressed with the handwriting! So glad I chose the cursive version of Logic of English: Foundations. And I’m proud of Molly for persevering.

I’m also frustrated that I’m a certified reading specialist and elementary (K-6) teacher and I don’t know what my daughter should be able to do! In my defense, I never worked as a reading specialist and was a classroom teacher in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. AND I’ve now been home longer than I taught. (Sigh. I didn’t realize that until this very second. I shouldn’t, but I find that truth rather depressing. Why?) Therefore, I neither have real experience teaching emergent readers (except the long-term substitute position in first grade, where I really did learn quite a bit) nor do I remember what I learned in grad school.

So I pulled out my old textbooks and did some Googling to read up on the various phonological skills and at what ages the average child masters each of them. Oh, and I learned (or was reminded?) that I’ve been using phonological awareness and phonemic awareness interchangeably, and they’re not the same! Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness (thank you, Wikipedia). Sigh. This Reading Rockets article was the most helpful. I also relearned that, even though her reading book is introducing her to three- and four-phoneme words, it’s easier for a child to learn with two-phoneme words. I found some Elkonin box resources on TeachersPayTeachers and the Florida Center for Reading Research, the latter of which I’ve been using since college because of its free and easy-to-use resources.

A glimpse into our school area/dining room during a typical day. It drives me absolutely bonkers. I can’t stand the mess. And I have no energy to clean it up when we’re done. But it cannot go on like this!

Spanish

I can’t decide if I like Whistlefritz. I think it has potential and I believe I have the ability to make it work, but it’s causing me a lot of stress. I was already aware that the lessons are written for 40-minute sessions, but I didn’t realize just how difficult it would be to split the lesson up. Honestly, my biggest beef with it is the ugly page format of the lesson plan book. I like colorful pages with boxes of information. You know, a colorful box with a list of vocabulary, another colorful box with a list of materials, another box with easy-to-read, step-by-step instructions. All the information is there; it just isn’t visually appealing, and it’s not easy to glance at the page and find what I’m looking for quickly. For example, the Spanish script–what I’m supposed to say–is in parentheses and mixes in with the directions. Before lessons, I go through and underline them with bright colors so I can quickly find them when needed.

I’ve also learned that it seems to present a lot of new vocabulary at once. I wouldn’t have known this until actually trying them with my five-year-old. Now I know that teaching eight different shape names in one lesson is overwhelming. I would prefer bite-sized pieces every day over a lot at once, especially at that age. It’s important to note that this curriculum is written for pre-K and early elementary.

I do like the content so far. We started with greetings and moved to numbers, colors, and shapes. These concepts work well together, and we’ve done a number of practice activities that incorporate the use of all the vocabulary in these lessons, albeit I’ve had to come up with these short activities on my own. The Spanish lessons have gone well with math. I’ve made it a point to ask most of the math questions in Spanish, such as “How many carrots are there?” or “Which color has more–orange or green?” In math we’ve covered counting to ten and graphs, and math and Spanish have complemented each other well. (Here’s an example of the need for shorter bit-sized lessons: counting to five took an entire chapter in math and counting to ten was the following chapter–at least two weeks on counting from 1 to 10. It would’ve been nice if the Spanish focused on a few numbers at a time instead of teaching them all in one lesson!)

Whistlefritz has required a lot on my part, and maybe this is a good thing. Truly, I have learned a lot already. It meant that I had to spend extra time writing out the exact questions I wanted to ask to go with math or finding supplemental resources for daily practice. But I know Molly’s success at learning a foreign language is going to depend on how often we use the language together at home throughout our day.

A special thanks to my sis-in-law who is a high school Spanish teacher!

In a moment of desperation, I was certain Calico Spanish was a better fit for us and almost purchased a subscription right away before signing up for the free seven-day trial. Instead, I opted to give it a try. Wow! I wish every program offered a seven-day trial, and I wish that it was more doable to wait until the school year was already underway in order to make them a real part of the school day! The truth is, I might have already tried the seven-day trial this past spring (and I might have gotten a second free trial by signing up with a different email address), but since I hadn’t begun school with Molly, I had no idea if it was good. I had nothing to compare it to. I had no idea what school would even look like for us!

Calico Spanish is a mostly online curriculum. Print materials can be purchased, and I had originally desired to do this, but it’s an extra $200. Gulp. Thank you, but no way. I decided I’d print the pages I wanted, but after trying it out, I don’t think I’ll even need to do that. I’ll print the flash cards and a few other things. It’s beautifully organized and easy to follow. It’s all laid out right there on the screen; all you have to do is scroll down to view the short videos. Best of all, the lessons take approximately 15 minutes.

I don’t know. I do still kind of like Whistlefritz and will still try to incorporate it. We do a few minutes of Spanish review/activities during our morning basket time, and then Calico can be our actual lesson following our reading and math lessons. There are lots of opportunities to use Whistlefritz to teach math and social studies.

Using Usborne’s I Can Draw Animals for independent morning work
(Little tip: I’ve been finding lots of great Usborne books [mostly used but some brand new!] on AbeBooks.)
Molly spotted a katydid on the bridge during our nature walk at Valley Falls State Park.

Morning Basket Activities:

  • Breakfast-time Bible lesson: The Jesus Storybook Bible—“Son of Laughter”; The Ology–#20 “God Makes Promises”; Bible App for Kids–#4 “God’s Amazing Promise”; coloring page from My Bible Coloring Book; magnetic “felt” story pieces
  • Memory verse: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” -Proverbs 3:5-6
  • Virtue: Responsibility
  • Poetry: memorizing “A Child’s Prayer” from Poems and Prayers for the Very Young; readings from A Child’s Garden of Verses and The Real Mother Goose
  • Morning binder: address and phone number songs; today’s weather and weather graph; date, day of the week, season; calendar color pattern; days in school (place-value, tally marks, expanded notation); hundred chart
    • I’m already tired of doing this! I’m going to change it to a Spanish version so we can make it a little more worth our time.
  • Music: More Beethoven’s Wig: Sing Along Symphonies and patriotic songs. Molly has a real music class at her co-op. Oh, and we ordered another Beethoven’s Wig album. The kids really do love it. Even Mac “sings” along to it. His favorite song is “Surprise Symphony” by Hadyn. I can’t wait to put that on his birthday poster. Haha!
Reading: Logic of English—Foundations Level A, Lessons 10-11 and 2nd Assessment
  • Phonemic awareness: blending and segmenting
  • Handwriting: cursive o and drop-hook stroke
  • Phonics: the three sounds of o /ŏ ō ö/
Math: Dimensions Math (by Singapore Math) Level KA, Lessons 2-12 to 3-3
  • Chapter 2 test
  • Count to 10
Spanish: Whistlefritz, Lesson 6
  • Shapes–use flashcards and find shapes (How many blue triangles are there? What color is this shape? This is a red circle.)
Read-Aloud:
Science:
  • Read The Moon Book
  • Read various poems about the moon
  • Nature walk at Pricketts Fort State Park with friends
  • Nature walk at Valley Falls State Park
Art:
Social Studies:

Amazon Associates Disclosure: Kristin Boone is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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