This is Ava, Isaiah and Lila doing Learn to Read by Starfall. It is an excellent beginning phonics teaching tool. All my adoptive kids including the older ones started with this program and these 3 are just doing it during quiet time after swimming. Here is a link to it and it is free http://www.starfall.com/ It is very easy to use and if the child can click the mouse it can be self learning. We are planning our next school year now....We are thinking of returning to a style we taught last in 2005- unit teaching. It is where we come up with things of interest and each week or two all of our subjects are done with that unit. It requires way more on my part to plan but it by far has been the most fun and interesting way to home school. I will share what we do and any things of interest like field trips, crafts and how we incorporate the academic subjects into the unit so stay tuned.
4 comments:
I love visiting your blog! Just wanted you to know.
We LOVE starfall! our Speech therapist showed us the site and we USE it! I pray over our home learning and God has shown me the same style of doing the theme weeks or units. It works!
We are doing the same thing around here! School for us will start on August 8th.
We have everything ordered and on the way.
I am going to tackle Apologia Science this year! Anatomy and Physiology. I'm excited about it. :)
We are also going to be working on vocabulary, especially for Erika and Alli. I ordered Wordly Wise, and it should be here next week.
I love the beginning of the school year.
Looking forward to a great year.
My kids' school operates on a modified unit teaching method. The Primary school, Kitah Alef (1st grade) and up, functions with theme blocks. Depending on the topic, one to three weeks are dedicated to a certain theme/topic. This is incorporated to the teaching as much as possible, and the daily class life as well. At the end of the topic period, each kid has to create a topic book on their level. They save these and display them for everyone to see three times a year. At the end of the year they come home, but photocopied versions of the ones the class chooses to be outstanding remain in the class library. I might add, that those kids, who entered Kitah Alef together stay together as long as they are in the school. So over the years they build up quite a library this way. It's nice to walk in to the 6th graders and see all their topic books on the same, repeating topics through the years. Some of the junior high classes keep up the tradition and intend to till they finish school! I am not sure if we'll stick with this school for secondary or the kids will go to the state schools, like the older ones do now, but I'd love to see what they have to say in high school.
It was my kids' second year in the school, and already seeing the differences between their chanukah and other holiday books from last year and from this year.
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