All About Reading is Available!!

I'm a bit late in announcing this but I did want to let you all know that All About Reading Level Pre-1 from the awesome All About Spelling is now available.

The new All About Reading program is unique because it begins with Level Pre-1 for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and it focuses on what we call the Big Five Skills. These five fundamental pre-reading skills include letter knowledge, phonological awareness, print awareness, listening comprehension, and motivation to read. It is this specific set of skills that helps pre-readers understand the basics of language and how it works, preparing them to learn to read. 

With All About Reading Level Pre-1, your child will play special games, enjoy little crafts, and engage in charming storytime activities--all the while absorbing these all-important Big Five Skills.


Be sure and check out the samples at the links above.  I trust you will be very impressed.  I sure am.


Enjoy!
Paige

MidSouth Homeschool Convention Highlights

I attended the MidSouth Homeschool Convention this past weekend in Memphis and there were some great highlights for me.  The first and foremost was getting to meet Carrie Austin, the author of the Heart of Dakota curriculum.  It was such an honor to meet her and her sister Julie.  They have been an inspiration to me and it was my privilege to spend time with them.

I spent a great deal of time at their booth and to top it off they were next to Rainbow Resource's booth!  What a win win situation for me LOL.  I mentioned in my last post that I was leaning towards Saxon for Joshua's grammar.  After spending so much time at HOD's booth I got to looking at Rod & Staff for grammar.  One thing I've learned about Carrie Austin is that she picks what she recommends within her curriculum for a reason.  I've also learned that it's usually best to trust her and go with her recommendations first. Then if it doesn't work look elsewhere.  So I went with Rod & Staff English for Joshua.  After really looking it over I feel very good about it. It is scheduled within the Preparing manual so I don't have to think very hard about scheduling it either.

I also decided to put Jacob in Little Hands to Heaven right now. I hadn't been doing anything structured with him at all and I knew this would be a great start to "school" for him.  Today was our first day of LHTH and he had so much fun!!

I attended 2 workshops while I was there also.  I heard Ken Ham speak and it was excellent as usual.  I ordered his workshop on CD in fact.  I also went to Art Reed's workshop.  Listening to him confirmed my decision to use Saxon for Joshua. I highly recommend Mr. Reed's book and if you get a chance to hear him speak about Saxon math you should.  I'm still strongly considering using Saxon for Jacob too.  I'm still weighing things. Carrie recommends Singapore math. I'm seriously considering each of these and I'm grateful that I've got some more time.

One other change that is happening is in regards to Joshua's phonics work.  We have been using Saxon's Phonics Intervention. It's strongly focused on learning to read but does include spelling along with a great deal of other skills.  Joshua is reading well and his reading level has jumped several grade levels in the last several months.  He still struggles with his spelling though.  After praying about this I've decided to go back to All About Spelling with him.  The approach of AAS lends itself well to helping Joshua with any phonics holes he may have.  It will better address his spelling struggles also.  We will also be using the dictation in Preparing which also includes some spelling words.

Well those are the highlights and changes I made after attending Convention.  We are set to go now and I am really looking forward to our Journey using HOD as our core curriculum.  Our first week of Saxon math also went well.  Joshua says he doesn't like it but I know that's only because he's truly having to work at it LOL.

Blessings!