We are done K phonics!

And Rachael read her first phonics reader!!! I changed the layout of the blog. I'm not sure I like it. If it's hideous, let me know and I will change it again. I only have a couple minutes here and there during the day to get online so I end up spending that time doing things other than look for new premade blog layouts. heh.

ANYWAY....

Today we officially finished K12's K level phonics curriculum!!!! The last unit we essentially skipped because it reviewed things he already knew relatively well. We instead focused on a few other things, like his handwriting. Trevor has neat handwriting, however; he tends to use both capitals and lowercase in his words and they are all the same size. For ease of puncuation and sentence structure we've been working on proper handwriting. He's doing well. So today we worked a bit on handwriting and spelling and then he took his final assessment. He passed with flying colours (his only mistake was spelling "catch" as "katch") and so we now will take a break from K12 until I can get his Grade one unit ordered. We'll work on spelling, sight words and reading. He is reading really well and currently reads most level 2 phonics readers with some help. He has the Danny and the Dinosaur books and reads them with almost no help. We've been checking out readers from the library- classics like Syd Hoffman book and PD Eastman and, of course, some Dr Suess as well as others like Batman and Spiderman readers, which Trevor loves but are always more difficult.

In math he's moved onto word problems (that he can read!!) that have multiple steps- so someone might start with 5 dollars, mom gives them two dollars and they have 3 dollars left. Then the problem asks how much they had and how much they spent. He's catching on and we'll be finished the math book in about a month. I think. After that I will order him Level 4 in Developmental Math and we'll also start practicing tell time on an analogue clock and the calendar.

In history we learned about Hammurabi and his code of laws. We're still mummifying our chicken, it's on its final week. I changed the salt yesterday and he is very, um, not juicy. He doesn't smell and he's become inflexible. In chemistry we're going to do our experiment mixing acids and bases together after they have reacted to the cabbage juice indicator. I bought what I hope is mineral water this time.

On a Rachael note--- Rachael has been just dying to read. She tries to guess what Trevor is reading in his phonics readers. She asks me everyday if she can read a reader. She is too young for the k12 phonics (meaning, she lacks the attention span to do a full lesson) and she wants to learn soooooo bad that she lacks the patience to learn to read a 1/2 lesson at a time. So the past week we have been working on writing letters and the sounds they make. Everyday after her lesson Rachael would ask 'Can we get out the phonics readers now?" Today I said "Sure. We cantry, but you might need more practice." What d'ya know! She happily proved me wrong! She read the first story in Trevor's phonics reader which has one sight word "is" and only short "a" sound. It was called Sam and Pam and it's a basic story about them "at bat". She read the whole thing!!!!!!!! I was soo proud and amazed!!! I am probably going to give another curriculum a try because she wants to learn soooo badly and I want her to get the basics down. I like phonics and I know some kids can learn through a whole language approach, but I think having a good foundation in phonics rules is important to reading.

So sorry no pictures! But that's our big week in nutshell. :)