Spoony Spoonerton

Kinda old . . . but it makes me laugh everytime I see it!

Dare I Say It's Working?

We are finishing up our first year of (kindergarten) homeschool. It has been an absolute blast and we have definitely found our groove. We had a bit of a bumpy start with our phonics program. I thumbed through & selected Horizons (K) curriculum. No one told me that Horizons is crazy advanced (well, by just about one year, but that's a lot to a 5yo learning to read!) until two months into the drudgery.

So, I held my breath & totally chucked the Horizons program & picked up Bob Jones. We were doing BJU math already & I had many people recommend BJU to me for phonics. We started at the beginning to get a good, fresh start. Emelye loved it! There are phonics characters, a rabbit & his friends who "teach" the child, etc. No, this isn't a multimedia/ DVD curriculum. There are just some characters who are present during certain times in the lesson. (For example, HP drew Hopper the Frog for us on an index card. Emelye has Hopper hop from sight word --lily pad-- to sight word while she reads them.)

Emelye has thoroughly enjoyed this curriculum. Recently, though, my jaw started to drop b/c she actually has started reading things that I don't ask her to. The other day, she got a box off the counter & excitedly brought it to me, pointing & saying, "Mommy -- fat free!" "Yes, that's right, sweetie! That's my big reader." Today, she read my printed t-shirt while we were working on math.

But probably the biggest jaw-dropping moment happened this morning. Auntie Jenn gave us a huge box of early childhood/ elem ed stuff that she no longer needs since she doesn't work with kids in speech therapy anymore. One item included was a set of reading textbooks presumably for kindergarten/1st graders. While I was sleepily brewing my coffee, I hear, "Who made this mess?" It was Emelye reading from one of the textbooks. "That's awesome," I thought, smiled, and went back to my coffee.

She continued to read throughout the day, with no prompt from me, but some encouragement as to her ability to read. She has now read about 3/4 of that 150-page textbook. Now, mind you, there's at max 5 sentences on a page & she stumbles on some words (we haven't gotten to "r" influenced vowels yet), but on the whole she is reading. And reading well if I do say so. And reading because she wants to (which is important to me).

On the days that it seems like we don't get anything done, I do cherish these ah-ha moments of when I see my children actively learning & exploring because they want to. Good day.