Feeling Intimidated by English Cir. Choice...

[Katwoman]

I have always know that my children will outpace my knowledge. (Some days I think it was before they could zip their own clothes.... )

But I'm struggling with "English" if you can believe that. I've found a cir.: Spell to Write and Read. It has wonderful reviews but there are cautions that it's not easy to get started. Once you get started, it's a really good program. I have always been very weak in English and have felt a hole in my life because of this weakness. So I'm drawn to SWR because I'd like my children what I didn't have. BUT I've been reading the cir. and quite frankly it's like reading a foreign language - no pun intended. I'm completely intimidated. I tried talking to my Mom but she says this is what I get for not liking the subject growing up and need to find someone else to do it because I'm not smart enough.

I guess I don't even know why I'm posting, perhaps just expressing my sadness:

On the one hand, I'm just starting officially hs'ing and am worried about overcommitting and making us all miserable.

On the other hand, I want them to have a good basis for reading.

On the other hand, I'd like to really demonstrate that if I'm not good at something that doesn't mean I avoid it. I work at it until I get it.

On the other hand, what if my Mom is right? I spend all year trying to teach them but suck at it and waste their time showing them that no matter how much I apply myself there are some things I just can't do?

I'm out of hands. I'd hate to buy something else just because I can do it, IF it's not going to give them everything they need to be successful.

Blech!

[mary3mama]

I'm unfamiliar with the program you're talking about, but, what are the ages of your children?

All of us will have at least one area where we don't know enough to keep up with our child's interest. There are always resources.

Honestly, one of the best ways to get a better handle on english, as in grammar and spelling, is to read really good works.

Reading well-written materials makes such a big difference. That's how I got through so much in college. I would read a journal, for example, and then I'd be able to write in that 'voice' and style. It is almost osmotic, IMHO.

But, again, what are the ages of your children? I'm sure that several of us could make suggestions to help you feel stronger in this area, both for your personal development/self-esteeem, and to feel more prepared for your childrens' needs.

Lastly, is there a community college accessible to you? Taking an introductory english composition course, freshman level, would be an awesome resource. Many community colleges have non-credit options where you pay very little for the course, yet you get the same course work that the other students do.

Oh, and pooh to your mother not giving more support.

[VanessaS]

Originally Posted by mary3mama

Oh, and pooh to your mother not giving more support.

: That was really mean of her to say.

As to SWR, I've got to say . You could chase me with that book. Teaching spelling with phonograms is like teaching geography with lists and flashcards. The best way to learn spelling is reading, copywork, and studied dictation. That's how they do it in Germany and their writing skills are generally better than ours because of it. I told my German DH how they teach spelling here (phonics, lists, tests, etc.) and it took him a while to even understand what I was talking about. And then he said, "But that's insane." That's my hubby!

BTW, I speak, read, and write 2 languages fluently and received a perfect score on the verbal portion of the SAT and do NOT understand phonics or complex formal grammar. I just borrowed Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, opened it up, closed it, and put it in the "return to the library unread" pile. Other people swear by it (hey, whatever floats your boat) but I found it tedious at best. Not for our family.

Do what works. Drop the rest. Move on. Get over it.

Remember what your goal is: it's to teach your children to read and write fluently and eloquently. There are other methods to reach that goal.

[Katwoman]

My kids are 5 and 3, so we are just beginning.

We had some hs'ing workshops where the theme was "good foundation/good foundation". I'm just having a hard time figuring out what that should be for English. I've seen work books where you just copy words. I've bought first reader books. But I'm just not sure how to teach sounding out words - which I think is phonics.

We do read lots and lots of books. (In fact I've actually had a couple of strangers tell me they can tell I read to my children just by listening to them speak. : ) I also bought the Five in a Row program because of the different book rec. and projects. So that's covered. Hum .....

Do either of you use a diction program? Or do you just read and the child writes whatever you read?

[shoefairy3]

5 and 3 is too little for dictation imo

My 7 year old really like the hooked on phonics stuff. We borrowed the 1st grade and 2nd grade levels from the library, so it didnt cost us anything And now we have the letter names and letter sounds one at home for my 3 year old, although he isnt showing any interest in it whatsoever

[VanessaS]

Phonics is not just sounding out words. It's also about learning the labels for each sound (diphthongs, long e, etc.). We're teaching our children to read with good literature, running or fingers along the text, and sounding out words as needed. That works very well. We read the same books over and over (they enjoy that) and they slowly add words to their vocabulary. And the more words they can read the more knowledge they have about sound. It's all very logical. If you know how thought and bought sound then it's not much of a stretch to figure out fought, sought, and ought. You don't have to explain to them that ought makes the "ought" sound, it's intuitive. For practice we sometimes take letter blocks and practice word families. That's enough phonics.

There are some people for whom phonics is NOT intuitive and a formal phonics program might help that (or it might turn them off reading altogether).

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'd try without the phonics stuff first and just concentrate on filling their mind with words; reading aloud to them. Learning about the sound "ain" is much easier when you have a larger vocabulary. Then you can trace it to train, brain, drain, chain, plain, etc. But if your vocab is limited to brain and train you'll have trouble learning the others and you will have to learn the sound by rote.

A good foundation in English is learning the alphabet (Starfall is great for that. So are alphabet puzzles.), reading good literature, hearing good literature read, and writing excerpts from good literature. That is how the great authors learned to write and if it's good enough for them...

I agree. 5 and 3 is too little for any kind of formal grammar lessons. I occasionally let my 4 yo do a bit of copywork. We write letters to Grandma. He tells me what he wants to say (2 or 3 sentences), I write it down neatly, and then he copies it onto his own paper. We only do that once a week, or so. Sometimes I'll let him write out the shopping list or the weekly menu. He enjoys that because it makes him feel like a "big boy".

Normally it's just copywork (longer and longer as they get older) until 3rd grade when you combine copywork and dictation. Studied dictation goes like this:

Prep: Make sure that the passage doesn't have any sort of irregular punctuation or spelling. In poems change "ag'in" to "again", for instance, and substitute archaic or British spellings for modern or American ones as necessary. Write the passage in a clear hand or type it up.
Day 1. Read through the passage together. Copywork.
Day 2. Re-read the passage and note any difficult spellings, vocabulary, or forms of punctuation. Work on these specific issues by looking them up in reference books (dictionary, thesaurus, grammar text, etc. -- it's good practice!) Have her write each spelling word 5 times. Then cover her paper so that she cannot see the words and have her write them once. If it is correct, you are finished for the day. If it is wrong, have her correct it immediately and then repeat. There may only be one or two spelling words in a passage. Or even none.
Day 3. Dictation. You read the excerpt slowly, one sentence fragment at a time (you may have to prompt punctuation and capitalization at first) and they write it out from memory with a pencil. If there were errors have her immediately correct them. Practice the errors again.
Day 4. If there were errors, repeat day 3. If there were no errors, stop. No more dictation this week. It's a positive natural consequence for excellence.
Day 5. Same as day 4. If there are errors on Day 5 it might be that the excerpt was too difficult or long and you should scale back the next week.

The next week move on to a different passage.

For the very young it's best to do short passages from a book they're reading or something "real life" like a list, a letter, or simply writing their name on their "artwork". When they're school age, you can begin with more formal copywork. I like Spelling Wisdom as it has beautiful and interesting excerpts. Nothing dry, or boring, or contrived. But you could also just continue to take excerpts from things you are reading. Some people let their children pick an excerpt (from a quality book they are reading). Then their copybooks are collections of their favorite excerpts and something nice to look back on.

The idea is to let the children learn to write beautiful English from people who write beautiful English. Those horrid spelling texts tend to have equally horrid sentences like, "Jack had a ball. The ball is tall. The tall ball went to the mall." The sentences are created to practice whatever spelling rule is being discussed. How in the world is anyone supposed to learn from that? Wouldn't it be better to learn from something cute like this from Winnie-the-Pooh:

"Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."

or something gentle from Robert Frost:

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

or this from Abe Lincoln:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other"

or this from Albert Einstein:

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

or this (from the greatest copywork source of them all):

"Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous, love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end."

Inspired yet?

And now I'll stop proselytizing.

[Needle in the Hay]

Your kids are so little I wouldn't worry about it this year at all. There are some great videos to do with letter sounds, like the Leap frog videos, Word World, Between the Lions and probably more that I don't know about.
You might want to get the book Games for Reading by Peggy Kaye and take a look at the pre-reading games for your 5 year old. Things like mazes and dot-to-dots can help with reading.

Have fun doing little science experiments now and then, getting your kids outside, reading them good books (and less good books too if they are asking), taking them interesting places, having relaxing days at home, baking together, etc.

Maybe you can get one of those Complete Idiot guides or something for yourself (despite the title those books are full of information). On amazon they have one for grammar and style. I doubt you are as weak in English as you think you are.

Your mom is certainly not right and her response was so unhelpful I would probably think twice before talking with her again about homeschooling concerns.

[mamaUK]

I beg you to take a look at this link:

http://www.jellyandbean.co.uk/

It is an AMAZING reading scheme and she does leaning to write worksheets aswell. I specialise in Early Years 3 - 8 when I trained to be a teacher and this is such a good quality reading scheme that will hold your hand as you teach your children to read and write. I own it and my 4 year old can now read sentences like: 'A big duck is on the grass. "Quack, Quack," said the big duck.' She couldn't read 7 months ago, but she did know some of her sounds. this is a phonic based readng scheme with some words which obviously need to be learnt by sight.

They do ship abroad but unfortunately, it is quite expensive to buy the whole scheme but I felt it was more important to spend it on a decent scheme then other things.

Good luck

[1stTimeMummytoLore]

here's one you can try out and it's free, so the risk is minimal! this is a cute little sight that balances phonics and whole language learning. and IMHO it is very parent user friendly and a great low key introduction to reading. the author, Ms. White, is planning to have the complete series uploaded by the end of this year, but there are enough Alphabetti books already up to get you started. You just download the .pdf files and print them out yourself. You do have to register, but it is free. we've used these a bit and my kids really enjoy them.

www.progressivephonics.com

when it comes to reading, I am a firm believer that it needs to be fun and enjoyable for you and them to establish that good foundation because an essential piece of that foundation is a love and enjoyment of reading. the mechanics like spelling, grammar and writing are something you can polish later after the passion for the written word has firmly taken root.

[Katwoman]

Thank you! I appreciate everyone's responses. I'm going to check out all the links everyone provided.

I was so much more comfortable with my plans for hs'ing this year and then .... I had to fill out an Individual Learning Plan for K and it's - of course - structured by subject, what resources your going to use, what is she going to learn. I think it's pulled me off course a little bit. I was trying to fit my plan into the structure, but was told it needed to be more. I'm going to go back to my plan, which is really what everyone is describing. Reading, reading, reading.

You guys have been really helpful. I'm skipping naming any formal phonics program and we'll get one if we need to down the road. (Perhaps she won't even need one!)

This was a very helpful thread for me and I appreciate everyone's time in responding.

[VanessaS]

What's an ILP? And why do they care what you use?

[Katwoman]

It's a way of "registering" with the school district to indicate you're hs'ing. They have standards for each grade and they are interested in making sure you have enough in each subject to "reasonable" meet those standards. I was mostly surprised at the level of detail at the k level. The standards were developed for the classroom and they just use them as a guide for hs'er. Which I knew when I started out, but the longer I worked on it the more I got lost in the detail. I'm recommitted to staying out of the detail. It's distracting from what I'm really doing, which is meeting my DD1 where she is.