Chapter Books

I have been reading 'chapter books' to the girls for years and I love it! They each have a book on the go for bedtime that I read to them, a chapter a night (or more depending on how effective the begging is or how much I want to know what happens next!). When I first started reading them to Eve when she was four, I racked my brains trying to think of suitable books and remember what I had read as a child. If you are struggling to think of any, I suggest posting the question on any e-mail home ed lists you are on as it gets everyone talking and is such good fun to reminisce, exchange opinions and gather new titles to read to your children! Not all of the books that we read can be classed as 'quality literature' but the girls enjoy them and there is room for all sorts of reading material in encouraging your children to love books!

I have always hankered after having a house with an upstairs landing large enough to house a book case with comfy chair and lamp to curl up in with a good book! As that is seeming less and less likely with our house-moving luck, I have decided to live in the moment. I put a small bookcase that we were given in the hallway and stored all the girl's chapter books on there, right by their bedrooms for them to browse and enjoy!

I have listed the books and authors where appropriate that we have enjoyed in the past or are enjoying now:

• Eve's current reading material is the 'What Katy Did' Series which is an 1872 children's series written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey under her pen name Susan Coolidge. We are on the second book named 'What Katy Did at School' and we have three beloved copies that were my Nana's when she was a child!
• Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder - we have read the first five which cover the childhood years.
• Famous Five by Enid Blyton - Faith adores these and finds them really exciting. We have the unabridged copies complete with bookworm holes munched through them which are very charming. I tweak to suit as I read though to tone down the 'girls are weaklings' vein than pops up here and there!
• Charlotte's Web
• Books by Dick King Smith, most notable 'The Queen's nose', 'The hodgeheg' and 'The Sheep Pig'.
• The Sophie series, also by Dick King Smith, Faith really enjoyed these, I think she identified with the main character somewhat!
• Before we started What Katy Did, Eve and I read through the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis, we both thoroughly enjoyed the adventure and excitement in these books. I had started the series as a child but never finished them so it was a treat to get a second go!
• We discovered the author Noel Streatfield by chance and have read 'When the Sirens wailed' which was topical and about children and historically accurate which was great. We have a second one named 'Ballet Shoes' on the go which is just as enjoyable but we are reading it more slowly!
• We know Roald Dahl's books very well, although they can sail a bit close to the knuckle sometimes in terms of language, the girls seem to find them gloriously funny!
• I have Harper Cory, Wildlife Ways lined up to read to Faith.
• On Eve's list is Heidi, again an old family copy that I read as a child too and The Secret Garden.

I'd love to hear your recommendations in the comments!

Setting Reading Targets

Eve loves books but isn't keen on reading. I'm always looking for ways to get her to read without piling pressure on as she crumbles when under pressure and then can't read as she gets so stressed she just can't even recognise letters properly. When she is relaxed and positive she reads fluently and beautifully with delightful expression, and that is how I'd always like it to be for her. I want her to love reading and get as much pleasure from it as I do! With consistent regular reading she improves vastly and then is less likely to get all twisted up over it, but here lies the catch 22, as without some pressure applied to actually read, she doesn't, and then doesn't get the benefit - you see the vicious circle?! Anyhow, I came across these target sheets and suggested to Eve that we make a target for how many books she reads every week. She loved the idea and decided she would read ten books every week - we even did some maths to work out that some days she needed to read two (or more?!) to hit her target! She chose the sharks targets for this week then jumped into her first book, once read she writes the title on the sheet and colours in a shark.

This is our book trolley. Eve's reading books are on the top shelf, Faith's are on the middle shelf and our 'cuddle up and read together's or snuggle up and look at alones' are on the bottom. Eve has a selection made up from different reading schemes that suited her progression through phonics, and some non-fiction books. I have started to include some stories from the bottom shelf too so that she branches out a little. The thing with our Eve is that she is very logical and likes life to follow suit, I think that this is why the target sheets appeal to her as they set out the stall and make her week predictable! It has removed the haggling over 'how many pages' she has to read as well! Faith has gotten in on the action too - only not for ten books a week!



Letter Formation and Early Reading for Faith

Faith is working her way through set one of the Dandelion Readers and is flying along. She loves to read and whilst she doesn't remember all of the letters yet she just looks up at me for a prompt! She blends like a pro and it's lovely to see!

We are also working on letter recognition and formation still. Faith enjoys little booklets and we have moved on to these books from Sparklebox (you can download the whole set from the link at the top of the list of booklets) and these letter formation sheets. I thought the sheets looked rather boring but Faith insisted on doing every dotted 'b' before doing them herself and I was amazed at her steady pencil control and beautifully formed letters!

Multisensory Sight Words

A week or so ago I posted about making up a sight words barn game to help Eve to learn sight words in a fun way. Well by Thursday I could tell that it was losing it's appeal for her and she was showing signs of frustration about learning them again. Luckily I had ordered Success with Sight Words by Sara Throop. It has loads of fun, easy to set up, multi sensory games and ideas for learning sight words. I was excited even reading through the book as I saw a new way to put fun into something that Eve finds tedious and frustrating, anything to lighten the experience for both of us is great in my book!!

Today we made sight word biscuits! I chose to just review the words that Eve has already mastered. Whilst I rolled out the batch of dough, Eve pulled out magnetic letters to spell the sight words, some remembered and some prompted by me. I was impressed that she could spell them as so far we have concentrated on reading and recognising them and not looked at the spelling aspect. Eve then pressed the letters into the biscuit rounds and they were baked. To get a biscuit to eat, Eve had to tell me what the word said! Without even realising it Eve had read and spelled the sight words three times - once with the magnetic letters, once as she pressed them into the dough and then as we pulled them out of the oven. Brilliant! Faith also joined in with this but stamped letters that she knew into smaller biscuit rounds and she had two to eat after telling me the letters!

we are also working through '100 Sight Word Mini Books' by Lisa and Jay Cestnik which has as you may have guessed, has 100 mini books to be photocopied and folded then completed. Eve was very taken with Faith's alphabet mini books and providing some for Eve too has proved a big hit! They include a short poem with spaces to complete the sight word and a tiny word search on the back to find the word as many times as you can. The other useful aspect to the book is that it outlines a pathway through the sight words as later mini books build on the sight words that have come before it. I had been trawling through Eve's reading books to list what words she needed to know but as I am at present giving her the freedom to choose them herself this plan isn't working anymore. Plus I love a bit of organisation and a plan so this suits me too!!

I have plenty more fun ideas up my sleeve and will post as we try them out!! Hope I'm not boring you all silly with this sight word craze but it's where we are at right now and I try to follow the girl's needs!

Dandelion Readers

I have already posted about the ReadWrite Inc series of progressive phonic readers that I am using to help Eve learn to read. Recently I discovered a really fantastic series to go alongside called Dandelion Readers. I bought set 2 of the 'readers' starting with the book 'Chips For Lunch'.

The website is very clearly set out so you can see what digraph sounds are in each book.  They are a joy to read with cleverly written and engaging stories that contain lots of repetition of the example sound such as 'ch' or 'ing' or 'ed' endings. The illustrations are a mixture of cartoon type characters on photographic backgrounds. I wasn't sure that I would like them but Eve studies the pictures very closely and really likes them. 

There are two sets to provide extra practice with each digraph - I only have set 2 at the moment. The only thing that annoys me about them is the tendency for the stories to use 'says' instead of 'said' after speech marks..... just my personal preference! I will definitely be getting the next set soon though, ready for launching into vowel digraphs!

Adding the Suffix 'ed'

I thought that I had pushed Eve a step too far with this to start with. In the first session we built words from root words, adding 'ed' with an extra consonant if needed, as in the picture below.  After this we read two pages from the reading book she is on which contained 'ed' words. Eve really struggled with it and got quite frustrated. The reason being is that I had not prepared properly and had neglected to realise that 'ed' endings are sounded three different ways depending on the root word. For example:

• 'id' sound as in 'chatted' or 'ended'
• 't' sound as in 'jumped' or 'dropped'
• 'd' sound as in 'yelled'

To help Eve get past this I got her to visualise telling her Daddy about what she had done, so where the text read 'He ran and skipped', I waited until she had read the root word 'skip' then prompted with "And you would tell Daddy that you skip......" and then Eve managed to finish off with "I skipped" and she had the correct pronunciation.

I did consider leaving it totally and coming back in a month or so but decided to try another tack and we got out the movable alphabet and Eve chose a root word then spelled it using the letters, she was saying 'pinched' with a 'd' sound at the end but spelling it 'ed'. Afterwards when we read the next two pages of the reading book, she more naturally pronounced the correct endings without prompting. I was really surprised and pleased..... I think I underestimated her!!!

Trusting in Montessori!

I decided long ago that Montessori would suit my daughter and I in working towards learning to read and write.  The reasons being that I recognised that she needs structure but in a fluid manner where the lessons moulded to her instead of her being required to march to the lessons.  I also needed a structure to make me feel secure in approaching something that I had never done before!  I approach it differently than traditional Montessori methods in that I bring the materials to her rather than waiting for her to approach the materials as would happen in a Montessori classroom.  I do this because we are at home and it isn't set out as a classroom and therefore I draw her attention to them, presenting things in a way that suits her.  Through the last 18 months of my training I have developed the confidence to take the original materials and adapt them to suit our situation and these photos are an example of that!

We have been working on building CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and I thought that it was time to introduce reading the words and matching them to the objects so I combined two of the box ideas and wrote out the words as I sat next to my daughter.  She wanted to try doing it and although I hadn't planned on this, it worked beautifully.  So I couldn't guess what word she was writing she was even sounding them out in her head then writing them for me.  Many of the letters were formed incorrectly and some of the vowel sounds were inaccurate but these two were spot on and I was so thrilled! We don't practice writing the letters out - I placed my trust in Montessori and that she would write when she was ready and here are beautifully written letters learned from following wooden letters with her fingers and memorising the feel and the sound of them!

It is so hard to trust that my daughter will learn to read and write and so hard to back off and not push things along at the pace they would be taken in school.  I have seen the value of little and often, seeing her build upon skills every day, as well as the value of leaving it alone for a few weeks and then being amazed by the leap in her capabilities.  I am gradually becoming more confident in my ability to guide her emerging skills. My goal? For her to read and write with the same joy and pleasure that she has in being read to!