Here's Help Finding Some Good Books!!

Living books are the way to go, whether you're reading for pleasure, for school, or both.  

Here's my list of favorite book lists... :)

• CM Book finder- I love this one! It's an easy way to search for living books on a certain topic within a defined age/grade level. Or, I search by book title to see if a book I found elsewhere happens to be recommended. If it is, I know it's considered a living book, and not inappropriate, which saves me the time of proofing it. 
• Beautiful Feet Books History Through Literature, books by reading level 
• Sonlight Readaloud booklist- This is one of quite a few book lists on this site. Realize that it's a curriculum company, so they'd like to sell you an entire year's curriculum at once. But many people simply use them for their book lists, checking the books out from the library. To do this... 
• Find books by grade level - search by grade, click complete package, then click learn more, and you'll see them all listed. 
• Find books by subject - go to one of the various book packages they offer and click to see what's included, and it lists all the books. We check these out from the library. 
• They also have summer reading lists for boys and girls each year too!
• Jim Trelease's Brochure Booklists- Download the brochure for each age to see his top picks. These are also found in his book, The Read Aloud Handbook, which I highly recommend owning! 
• See my family's personal favorite books by age (at the bottom of the page)
• The Ultimate Booklist- This is a list of living historical books arranged chronologically, by grade.  

For more great reading resources, check out this page! You'll find resources for raising your children to be great readers, teaching your children how to read, and assessing their reading comprehension and level.

Happy Reading! :) 

Is Your Child Ready to Learn How to Read?

It's never too soon to start reading to your children. It might, however, be too soon to teach your children HOW to read. There are several reading-readiness signs to watch for, and I'll share them below. But first I'd like to share the thought that learning to read sooner is not always better. 

Finland's children begin formal reading instruction at age seven, and even then are only in school for half days. (2:6) Although they have this "late" start, a whopping two years behind American children, they have the highest reading scores in the world! (2:170) As American schools cut out recess & play times to allow for more test prep (even in Kindergarten!), Finland children are given 15 minutes of recess for every 45 minutes of class. They have no national curriculum, but instead choose to heavily emphasize reading to children.

How We Use Victory Drill to Build Reading Speed

Have you ever heard of the Victory Drill Book? I heard about it from another home school mom while we were both stuck waiting in a doctor's office waiting room. It's a basic, no-fluff book you can use in a variety of ways, over and over again for multiple children to strengthen their reading skills. The bulk of the book amounts to a series of word lists, generally grouped by a common phonics or spelling rules, and the lists progress from simple (including at, sat, mat & rat) to advanced (awkwardly, Americanism, extraordinary & Mississippi). Victory Drill may be used to build reading speed and fluency for students in any grade. It can also be used when teaching reading, spelling, or phonics rules. 

Since I taught my son to read without using a traditional phonics program (here's how), we used Victory Drill to reinforce spelling and phonics rules while building his reading speed. After using it for over a year, we've settled into a routine with it. 

Here's how we use it...

What is My Child's Reading Level?

Since my oldest son requires a steady stream of books from the library for independent reading, I wondered what his reading level was and how I could use that information to see if the books I'm picking out for him are challenging enough. That seemed like a simple enough task, but it turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected. 

First of all, reading assessment test results can vary... by quite a bit. School's tests are no exception. Your child may test as reading at a 4th grade level locally, a 5th grade level in the next county, and a 3rd grade level in the next state. Test results can also vary from year to year, as standards fluctuate. So I've decided there is no such thing as a "fourth grade reading level." I still wanted to get a ballpark idea, and then ask my librarian what to do with it, so we took some free online reading tests. I'll share the links here in case you're interested...

Free Online Reading Tests

Better than Worksheets, Quizzes, Tests!

One of the beauties of home schooling is that we can utilize different methods of education for our children than the school system does. After we realize that home schooling isn't school at home, we open ourselves up to a phenomenal wealth of possibilities. The more I read about education, the more I find myself identifying with the Charlotte Mason Method. There are so many gems within it, and today I want to share one of them with you. It frees you and your child from the mundane grind of endless busywork, worksheets, quizzes, and tests. Best of all, it helps students to truly own their knowledge and keep it, rather than regurgitating it temporarily only to lose it later.

What I'm referring to is narration. 

What exactly is narration? It is the telling back of what the student knows. "As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should 'tell back' after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read" (Vol 6, Preface and p. 155)  

In practice, it goes something like this:

Learning to Read: What Worked for Us

Learning to read is a messy process, and there isn't one clear-cut way to do it.  I've shared many of my favorite reading resources here, and today I'm going to share with you what exactly worked for us.

Pre-Reading:

I did NOT push formal reading lessons on my kids early-on. If you're not sure why on earth I chose to wait then please read this. Instead, we strongly encourage a LOVE of reading by reading aloud, a lot.

Gentle Introduction:

Teaching Children How to Read

Here are my favorite resources and materials for teaching children how to read!

For a Gentle Introduction:

• LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD - We received a copy of this and it turned out to be a super-easy way for my boys to learn their letter sounds with NO drilling, no flash cards, no formal lessons whatsoever. Just a simple video. 
• LeapFrog Talking Words Factory DVD, - This is the follow-up dvd introducing how to blend letter sounds into words. This is only for children who already know their letter sounds! 
• We got a lot of use out of our Lauri Letters. We used them to play simple games, and as they showed interest we used them to form words as a game. They thought this was great fun and were able to sound out three letter words in pre-school without any formal lessons. 
• Be wary of doing too much too soon by way of formal reading lessons during the pre-school years. 

For Reading Lessons:

• Hooked on Phonics is a great program if your child is ready for reading lessons! It's easy to pick up and use without parent preparation before-hand, and you can rest assured that you've got it covered. I'm currently using it with my newest reader and it's going well. 
• BOB books are GREAT for beginning readers! It's a series of easy-readers that gently progress from the easiest three letter words to books with more than one sentence per page. I've used them both as a supplement and to teach reading. 
• You can just jump right in, or if you'd like help making lesson plans to go with them, check out Teaching with Bob! It's written by a former reading tutor and home school mom who posted her own lesson plans that she used to make the Bob books into a complete phonics reading program. I used the free version of this when teaching my boys to read with Bob books. Now she's also made her curriculum available as a handy, printable PDF file you can purchase so you don't have to go through the blog for every single lesson.  
• There are also lots of free printable activities that you can find online to go along with the BOB books. Here are a couple sites to check: Royal Baloo, 3 Dinosaurs, This Reading Mama
• I liked Hooked on Phonics and Bob, but if you want to try something else,   check out Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool! I hadn't heard of it when we got started. Her reading program is 100% free, accessed online. She uses the McGuffey readers and begins by teaching common words by sight, then progresses into phonics. By the time you child completes it, they should be a very proficient reader. If you're interested, look at "Getting Ready 1" (preschool) and "Getting Ready 2" (kindergarten). If your child knows letter sounds and is ready to learn to read, start at lesson 172 of Getting Ready 1. 
• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons - I have not personally used this program, just so you know. BUT my sister-in-law did and recommends it for kids who are starting from the beginning with letter sounds rather than kids who already know how to sound out basic words. I checked it out from the library and would highly suggest that you do the same if you're considering it. It's a no-frills program (unlike Hooked-on-Phonics), but if you have  a tight budget it might be a great fit. If you read the Amazon reviews you'll see that the overwhelming majority of people who buy it love it. It works. It's cheap. It's doable. It's also non-consumable, which means that $15 is all you'll need to teach all 25 of your kids to read. Or 4. Or 2. What ever. 
• The Three R's by Ruth Beechick. This little set of three books is great for mom of grade schoolers, regardless of what curriculum or method you choose. It is seriously fabulous. Don't just take my word for it either... check out the Amazon reviews.
• Remember to keep reading lessons short!  This helps prevent burnout and keep learning fun... you don't want your Kindergartener to be overwhelmed with school, or you'll have a long, hard road ahead of you!! You can slow down or speed lessons as needed to suit them to your child's pace.
• Want to know what we did? Read my post, Learning to Read: What Worked For Us. Of course this is just what worked with one kid... my current recommendation for a homeschooling Mom teaching reading to her kids would be to just buy Hooked on Phonics. The price is well worth it, it is easy to implement, and it saves me time. My recommendation to parents (whether homeschoolers or not) who just want to start informal reading lessons is to read through the Bob books together, no lesson plans needed. 

Please Remember That Every Child Learns Differently

It's important to work with your child's individual ability and interest. If children are "introduced to letters, words, and reading through their own learning style strength, they achieve much higher reading competency... If the child is strong kinesthetically, it's important to include hands-on practice such as tracing letters in the air with the hand or whole arm and/or tracing the letters with a finger in sand or salt. If the connections between the sounds and letters are not clicking for the visually oriented learner, use picture cues and focus on the shape of the letters, then write the letters or touch them. The auditory learner benefits by hearing a word first, having the phonetic sound pointed out, tracing or writing it, and then using it in a game or experience."(Source, page 98) 

*** Go back to my Reading Resources page! ***

--------------------------------------

Reading for Pleasure

There are two basic activities that work together to help literacy skills grow in leaps and bounds. Those two activities are: being read aloud to (by parent and/or teacher), and SSR (Sustained Silent Reading: reading to yourself for pleasure). For more on reading aloud, click here. So what about independent reading, or SSR? The National Reading Panel's 2000 report snubbed the merits of SSR based on very few short-term studies, but long-term studies overwhelmingly show that students who read the most, read the best.(1:85) 

For the Love of Reading... READ ALOUD!!!

"What we teach children to love and desire 

will always outweigh what we make them learn." 

The primary gift of a good education is a love of reading. If you can provide the fuel to ignite this flame in your child, the possibilities are endless. The whole world is within his grasp. Not only is he exposed to different elements of language (rhythm, rhyming, language, sounds) and different topics then what may otherwise come up in conversation, but he is also given the ability to self-teach on any topic that peaks his interest. 

Reading is the foundation for most all other learning. Even if your child is science minded, for example, what good is a seventh grade level science book when he can only read on a fifth grade level? He must learn to read well before he can read to learn. Inadequate reading skills are all too common, and stifle all other learning potential. 

What can you do?