Ramblings...

A vast number of parents with preschoolers are familiar with starfall.com; it’s a wonderful free site that helps teach the all-important skill of reading. General Disarray loved using the site, and will still check it out every now and then even though he has mastered reading; it’s just that much fun. Professor Chaos has started to enjoy using it more lately. At first he wasn’t really sure about it, mostly from a navigation/mouse clicking standpoint. Now that he has all of that worked out he is always begging to log-on.

This morning while he was using it he clicked on the More.Starfall.com section. It only allows a limited selection of items if you don’t have a membership, but he greatly enjoyed what he was able to do, so I looked into the cost. It is 30$ a year, not a bad price I figured when you factor in all it allows you to do. More.Starfall.com features interactive number lessons, similar to the alphabet section on the free portion of their site, as well as fun math songs. Once a child has mastered their numbers they can then click on the addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division buttons and do lessons in those areas.

Aside from the math activities this portion of the site also features more reading/phonics activities, songs and rhyming, as well as a talking library! Which I think may be my favorite part of the site. The More.Starfall.com portion of starfall.com also works hand in hand with the Starfall Kindergarten Curriculum too. I had considered buying that curriculum this year but decided to make a custom curriculum for Professor Chaos like I did with General Disarray. It looks like a great program though, if you are looking for an interactive kindergarten curriculum check it out!

Starfall.com is not compensating me for sharing their product information; I just like to plug the things we use to help other families find useful materials and programs to use with their kiddos!

The Spouse is a skeptic and not just when it comes to religion, but also when it comes to my ability to drive, that anything made with peas will taste good, and homeschooling. I’ve slowly been winning him over as far as Child #1 is concerned. He can see the work that we do, he can ask him questions about what we have learned, and he can hear Child #1 read to him, be it a story or a street sign that happens to be in English.

With Child #2 though the doubts are still there. Mostly I think because with preschool age kids there isn’t much you can do that produces anything you can hold and examine *like worksheets or journal entries*. There are arts and crafts which help the learning process, but to a skeptic it’s just a picture. Take for example a painting of circles, to a homeschooling parent it’s more than just a painting of circles, it’s shape recognition, fine motor development, and a craft. To a skeptic it’s just a painting of circles.

So what is one to do? I’ve taken the “I’m just going to do what I do and you will see in the end” road in order to save my sanity. Although I have to admit when little moments like the one I’m going to share happen, I do add points to my homeschooling mom ego.


*Child #2 wanted an apple so I took one out of the fridge for him and while I was slicing it up he ran into the living room and proclaimed the following*:

Child #2: “Apple starts with A, and A says /a/.”

At which point The Spouse who was in the middle of a video game shouts towards the kitchen “Did Child #2 just say *repeats back what Child #2 just said*?” Before I can answer Child #1 pipes in with “Yeah dad because apple does start with A, and A makes the /a/ sound, like in apple…/a/ apple, get it?”

Two points for mommy! Oh yeah! Not like I’m keeping score or anything…

As part of my tweaking last week I redid our learning poster. I got the idea for a learning poster from Brightly Beaming Resources, but haven’t stuck to it very well. Hopefully with these changes I can actually stick to it. The poster was originally designed to go with Brightly Beaming’s Prep Curriculum, but I wasn’t really feeling it. I did like having a letter to focus on weekly, as well as the shape/color/number learning. I just needed to do it in a way that works for us.

So here is the original poster:




And here is the revised one:



I’ve gotten rid of the weekly theme, vocabulary word, and nursery rhyme. Instead of those we have our weekly poem, and our monthly virtue. Along with the virtue there is a weekly quote, the quote won’t always tie into the virtue, instead it would act more as food for thought. This learning poster will be for both boys to use as well *unlike the previous learning poster*.

I’ve dropped the letter of the week and have made a phonics section. It will feature a weekly letter for Child #2, but we will be focusing on the letter sound as well. I found these awesome phonics cards at our base bookstore. On the front they have the letter *upper and lower case* along with a picture of items that have that letter sound, then on the back there is a list of words with that sound as well.

For Child #1 I’m using the combination cards, which also feature words on the back that he has to read to me each day. To further help Child #2 learn the letter sounds and recognize words I’ve also added the words to a small dry erase board. He reads them with us every morning to help him hear the weekly sound in the words, and of course get a jump on the reading process.

I use to do this with Child #1 as well, we kept the small board on our front door, and before we left the house we would read the words. The words would either have the same letter sound or they would belong together some how *like family members, or rooms in a house, etc.*.

Also on the board is a math section. I’m going to alternate every week between numbers, colors, and shapes for Child #2. For Child #1 I made sheets with addition and subtraction facts on them, and he has to read a new sheet everyday.

So far the poster is working out great. The boys enjoy doing each piece, and Child #1 really loves reading the words with his brother. He gets to help his little brother learn while showing off what he is capable of doing, and while they are busy at work with their learning poster I can actually get breakfast cooked. It’s great!