Me...a homeschooler??!!: Stuff we use...

I'll preface this by saying two things...1) There are a lot of pictures in this post. 2) We don't use ALL of this stuff ALL of the time, in fact many days go by where we don't pick up any of these books at all. She is only three and I don't force her to do "Molly school" everyday. I understand her learning capacity and her attention span and trying to make her sit down for hours like a 3rd grader would be like...well, like torture, for both of us! 3) (I realize that I said only two things, but I thought of another) we don't do things ONLY from these books either, we read tons of library books, we watch videos, we play with legos and we do lots of things informally that still have educational merit, but you don't find in any book. Like yesterday when we counted bunny grahams individually and by 5's, then subtracted them as she ate them. We had lots of fun.

You can make the pics bigger by clicking, I had them much bigger but then my layout cut off like 1/2 the pic so I made them smaller.

Anyway, onto the stuff.

Here is our kitchen table, covered in stuff.

Clockwise from top center is: Brain Quest workbook-1st grade version, a bunch of cheapo Carson-Dellosa workbooks, don't know the brand workbooks from Wal-Mart sight words and math 1st grade versions, Kumon write/wipe off word cards, Kumon cut/sticker and paste book, Highlights High Five (Highlights for pre-K) and Highlights Puzzle Buzz magazine, Handwriting Without Tears Get Set for School workbook and teacher's manual, Explode the Code reading books 1 and 1 1/2 with teachers manual, (center left) The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, (center right) Singapore Math Earlybird Kindergarten math textbook A and matching workbook.

Now I'll go into a little more detail about some of my materials.

Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading is an excellent book that starts out teaching basic phonics and advances up through 4th grade vocabulary. It teaches a very short lesson and a list of words that apply to the lesson that you read to the child, then read with the child and then the child reads to you. Then there is a short story for the child to read that includes words from that lesson and all the lessons up to that one. It also sometimes has extra games to play to reinforce what the child has just learned.

Here's a pic from inside the book

Next up is Explode the Code, a reading curriculum. It does things in a very systematic manner, much like OPGTTR. We have the teacher's guide for books 1-2 and we have books 1 and 1&1/2. 1&1/2 is just more repetition of what you learned in the first book. Instead of just teaching the lesson it gives activities to do with it for reinforcement. The books go on up through book 8 which is a 4th grade reading level I believe. It also involves writing which is a little harder for Molly since while she can writing all the letters, doing so repeatedly is pretty tough. Here's a pic from the book.

A pic from book 1&1/2, which we haven't started yet, though reading alone I think she could easily do the work.

Next up is Handwriting Without Tears, which is obviously a writing program. Again, Molly already knows how to write her capital letters, but she still doesn't have the coordination to do it neatly or consistently. Her fine motor skills are not really advanced, I think she's pretty average. So even though she knows *how* to write she still needs the lessons and the repetition to practice. HWT comes with lots of other supplementary activities in the teacher's book including songs, which we really like around here.

The last of my actual, real curriculum is Singapore Math. I just got this in the mail this afternoon so we haven't done much with it yet, though we did do the first half of chapter one. This particular book is Kindergarten book A, which is supposed to be the first half of the year but flipping through the book Molly knows almost everything in it already. We'll still go through it though, because at her age she thinks it's fun and it will be good practice, both for her skills and for practicing sitting still and working through something. I really like this particular curriculum because it's bright and colorful and fun, which is a pretty big deal when working with a little kid and also because I like the rationale behind it. It's the way they teach math in Singapore (hence the name :-P). They put an emphasis on mental math and going through each concept and building towards mental math. Their structure is Concrete> Pictorial>Abstract. It seems really logical to me which is why I like it :-)

This is the concrete phase

This is pictorial on the left, abstract on the right.

This is the reinforcement for the above lesson from the activity book supplement

The rest of the books I've collected and we use from time to time. They are good for carrying around to keep her busy when we are out and about. I like them because they are simple, but they don't have any teaching in them, just activity which is where they fall flat compared to the textbooks. Still they are fun for Molly and we enjoy them. The highlights and Puzzle Buzz are especially good for keeping Molly busy and they have stickers and all sorts of fun pencil activities.

And a few pictures of Molly dancing around while she ate cantaloupe this evening, silly girl.