We've had some bad colds at our house in the last week, and with some holiday busyness, we didn't manage to do much "school". We have done two more Charlotte Mason style reading lessons on the book Big Red Barn. Here they are:
Lesson 2
Objective: To learn the words "great", "green", and "field" by sight.
Method: I wrote each word in turn, telling SA what they said. Then I mixed it up, writing the words in different order and at different angles on a piece of paper until I was confident he knew each one by sight. Later, I pointed out each of these words in other stories we were reading, and he read them confidently.
I hadn't intended to do related phonics work until the next lesson, but SA brought it up himself. He noticed that "great" and "green" both started with "gr", and offered some other words beginning with the same blend on his own, without my prompting: "Grandma" and "grapefruit." I wrote these words down for him as well so he could see how they looked.
Lesson 3
Objective: To learn the "ink" family (in relation to the word "pink" in the story)
Method: I found a list of "ink" words in Phonics Pathways, and had SA sound them out. (I use this book as a resource. I do not really recommend it as a phonics program for young children...it seems more suited to remedial work. Sayings and humour seem more suited to older students. Lists and lists of words to read can be mind-numbing for children if you're not careful. There's a reason I'm using real books to teach reading, at least for the child I'm teaching now.)
Later in the day, SA found the Big Red Barn book, and read the first two pages on his own. Though we had not gone over the words "learning" and "squeal" yet, he read them confidently from memory. We'll still have to go over them so I'm certain he'll know those words anywhere, but next lesson I think I may make a puzzle for fun. I'll write out the first two pages on a sheet of paper, cut apart the words, and let him put them together correctly. We may also make other sentences using these words.
If you missed my introduction to these lessons, you can find it here.
Big Red Barn Reading Lesson 1
Big Red Barn Reading Lesson 4
Big Red Barn Reading Lessons 5, 6, and 7
The Awesome Mystery of Growth in Reading
