We have been doing lots and lots of reading this summer. I’m reading aloud to the girls as usual, but now they are both reading on their own, too. So exciting!

Delaney is a beginning reader – she can “sound-out” many words, she knows about 25 sight words, and she is good at using picture clues and context to help her with unknown words. Books with predictable stories, one or two sentences per page, and not too many difficult words are the best for her independent reading.

I have found that many “easy readers” are either 1) not very interesting or 2) not actually easy for beginning readers.  There are lots of good ones available, though – here are some of our favorites that are being read and re-read by our newest reader.

1. Elephant and Piggie Books

I have to start with Mo Willem’s Elephant and Piggie books. While these are not technically easy-readers, the funny, engaging stories are highly motivating.  There’s just something about reading text in speech bubbles that makes it less intimidating!  When Delaney reads these books, she reads with fluency and inflection and lots of giggles.  I highly, highly recommend Elephant and Piggie!

2.  Miss Rhonda’s Readers

I bought this little set of readers from Miss Rhonda’s Readers when Natalie was beginning to read.  I couldn’t resist their sweet look!  They do have adorable illustrations and fun, clever stories.  Miss Rhonda’s Readers feature phonetically correct words (as in, words that your child can sound-out) in fresh, engaging stories.  And, as an added bonus, these readers are printed in the USA with soy-based inks and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council for using well-managed forests and recycled fibers for their paper.  We have Set 1, and I see that Set 2 is now available – more cute books to share with my new reader!  You can read more about these readers and purchase directly from the Miss Rhonda’s Readers website.

3.  Brand New Readers

My mom bought Delaney her first set of Brand New Readers and they were a hit.  We’ll definitely be adding more of these sets to our collection.  These early readers come in little four-packs featuring the same character(s).  They have super-sweet illustrations and fun little stories – which is not easy to do using such few words!  Brand New Readers has a great website as well, where you can read three sample books and get tips about helping your new reader be successful.

4.  Science Emergent Readers

If your child likes to read nonfiction, these Science Emergent Readers published by Scholastic are a great choice.  They have full-color photographs accompanied by simple, predictable text.  Delaney loves reading about animals and nature, so these are a good match for her.  These science readers are often sold in packs in the Scholastic school book orders and are also available individually at Amazon.

This stage of early reading is all about building confidence and maintaining interest – find some books your child is interested in and read, read, read!

What easy-reader books have been popular in your house?  Do you have any questions about helping your child with early reading skills?  Ask away and I can answer in a future post!

Are you ready for summer?  It’s another unusually chilly morning here, but supposedly summer is on its way.  This Friday is our “official” last day of homeschool and then it’s Hello, Summer Vacation!  Our Summer List was such fun last year that we’ll be making another one this year – how about you?

{Originally posted June 2009}

I’ve seen lots of summer to-do lists popping up around the blog world, so the girls and I sat down and started one of our own. I divided the list into four categories: do, make, read, and go. I love all the ideas they came up with – it’s so neat to see the lovely, simple things they want to do.

Some of my favorites on the list: Delaney wants to go to a farm and see a pig and Natalie wants to further her origami skills. Since this photo was taken, they have added have a tea party, go to the art museum, and bake homemade croissants. I’m sure it will continue to be a work in progress throughout the summer! Today, they are completing the first item on their list – go fishing with Daddy. I’m off to enjoy some me time!

If you have made a summer list with your kids, or for yourself, feel free to link-up in the comments!

Happy Summer Playing!

We love listening to audio books, especially in the car. Luckily, our library has a pretty good selection of picture book/CD sets and audio chapter books. I also like purchasing audio stories and making themed audio story playlists for the girls. We can listen to them on our iPod or burn a CD for the car. The stories I choose to buy are usually favorites that we already own in book-form.  That way, we can enjoy the pictures while listening if we choose.

Audible Kids has a bunch of children’s audio books that are only 99¢ each – I’m usually able to find lots of great choices under a dollar, which is awesome!

Here is our Spring Audio Book Playlist – each one is just 99¢!

Blueberries for Sal
Happy Birthday Moon
Make Way for Ducklings
Max’s Chocolate Chicken
Miss Rumphius
Mushroom in the Rain
The Caterpillar and the Polliwog
The Very Busy Spider
The Very Hungry Caterpillar

{One note about the audio books from Audible — you can only burn one CD, but you can put the books on your iPods, listen on your computer, etc.}

Happy Listening!

P.S. Those Audible linkies are affiliate links – just FYI.

{Originally posted November 2009 at Early Bird Homeschool}

I like to provide my girls with lots of “real-life” writing opportunities – helping with the grocery list, writing letters, making signs, etc.  They draw pictures, scribble-write, use invented/phonetic spelling, or copy words from a variety of sources.  I have been wanting to set-up a family mail center for a long time and we finally did it!

I think I have had all kinds of elaborate ideas in my mind, but I decided to go super-simple and use some white mailing envelopes we had on hand.  I cut off the flap and cut a semi-circle on the front half for easy mail delivery and retrieval.  I pulled them out one evening after dinner and we all sat and decorated our own envelope – the girls loved this part!  We should definitely be doing more family art projects.  I taped them up, set out a stack of paper, and we were all set!

We have been enjoying all kinds of letter-writing and reading.  Daddy can write notes if he leaves for work before the girls are awake.  He likes to give them riddles, codes or math problems to solve.  I can leave a note telling about something fun we will be doing.  The girls write lots of lovey notes, plus requests for playing games, making a special treat, or going to the park.  So, the girls are getting practice with writing and reading — plus, who doesn’t love getting mail?

This week I am going to set-out a stack of notes with the words, I am thankful for you because…., printed across the top.  I can’t wait to tuck some of these notes into their pockets and read the ones they write for me!

Why did I wait so long to set this up?

April 2010 Update: Our family mail envelopes are still going strong! Some of the girls’ favorite kinds of mail to receive are:

• a piece of a board/card game as an invitation to play (one Uno card, for example)
• secret codes to solve or rebus-type messages
• “You made me smile!” notes
• Pictures from Daddy – he draws great pictures of characters they love (Smurfs!)

Do you have a mail center at your house?

A bit of thinking-aloud, conversation, and encouragement are all you need to add a little extra learning to your snuggly read-aloud time! Boost your child’s reading comprehension skills by incorporating these simple activities into your existing read-aloud time:

1. Predict

• Look at the cover and read the title. Ask, “What do you think this story will be about?”
• Take a picture walk before reading – look at all the pictures, or just the first few.  Ask, “What do you think is going to happen in this story?”
• Stop reading mid-story and ask, “What do you think will happen next?” or “How do you think this problem is going to be solved?”
• Be sure to revisit your predictions when you finish reading the story.  Were your predictions correct?

2. Question

Think aloud and ask questions while you read.  Encourage your child to ask questions too, especially the classic kid question, “Why?”

• I wonder why…
• What would have happened if….?
• What do you think about…?
• Do you have a better solution?

3. Retell

• Encourage your child to use the pictures of a familiar book to retell the story to you.
• Before you start a new chapter, help your child retell what happened in the last chapter.
• Model the use of sequence words for retelling: first, next, then, finally (or last).
  

4. Connect

• Connect with a character: Would you have made the same choices? Which character are you most like?
• Connect with an emotion: How do you think (character) felt? Have you ever felt like that?
• Connect with a place: What do you think it’s like to live there? Would you want to visit this place?
• Connect with another story: This reminds me of another story we have read…

Here are a couple articles with more great ideas for making the most of your read-aloud time:

Reading Tips for Parents (Reading Rockets)

Tips for Reading Aloud With Preschoolers (Reading is Fundamental)

Happy Reading!

Happy First Day of Spring! We are working in the garden this weekend – transplanting some seedlings that have been hanging out in my garden window, building some trellises, and just enjoying the spring weather.  I hope you are all finding a bit of spring where you live, too!

I’m also sharing one of our favorite books over at Simple Kids today. I hope you’ll come over and check it out!

Have a wonderful weekend!

We have been having a crazy mix of rain and sun (and hail!) – just the perfect weather for rainbow-hunting!  With rainbows on our mind, I gave the girls this simple rainbow poem coloring sheet:

Natalie decided to make her poem about rainbow-colored fruit, and Delaney was using Lois Ehlert’s Planting a Rainbow for rainbow flower inspiration.

Here are the finished products – I love them!

I’m sure you and your kids could draw this yourself (and probably better than mine!), but if you want something ready-made, you can print my rainbow poem coloring sheet.

Speaking of rainbows, have you seen the awesome rainbow birthday party at Pink and Green Mama?  There are two posts full of rainbow goodness:  Decor & Snacks and Craftivities.  Good stuff!

You might also be interested in last year’s post about rainbow activities – I guess it’s becoming an annual tradition!

Happy Playing!

My girls have been looking ahead on their calendars to find the next holiday – guess it’s time to pull out some St. Patrick’s Day activities!

In the deep, dark archives of my teaching days I found this fun fill-in-the-blank book that you can make with your child, along with a happy little leprechaun to walk through the story.

1. Download and print the book. Cut the stack of pages in half (don’t cut the last page with the leprechauns!), put the top set of pages on top of the bottom set, and staple together.
2. Illustrate each page and choose words to fill in the blanks.
3. Color your leprechaun, cut out, and attach to a straw or popsicle stick.
4. Take your leprechaun through the story on his special walk!

(The book design is mine, but I’m not sure where I got that cute little leprechaun graphic – it was just a copy in my teacher stuff!)

Happy Playing!

Doesn’t Thanksgiving fall at a perfect time?  Just when my girls start rattling off their extensive Christmas wish lists, I can pull out some Thanksgiving books and crafts and we can all reflect more deeply about what we are truly thankful for.  Gratitude is always a topic of conversation around here, but even more so around this time of year.  Plus, I needed some new decorations to tide me over till Christmas tree time.  Today, we wrote Thankful Poems:

We started with making a list of all the things we are thankful for.  The girls each circled the things they are most thankful for, so we could save those ideas for the end of the poem.  We plugged their words into a simple poem structure:

I’m thankful for _______ and ________ and _______.

I’m really thankful for ___________.

I’m thankful for __________.

(repeat above line as many times as you like!)

But most of all, I’m thankful for ___________.

I printed their poems on watercolor paper.  We covered the poem with a leaf-shape cut from clear contact paper (just like we made our initials a while back).

The girls painted the whole page, let it dry, and then peeled off the contact paper leaf.  Beautiful!

If you have a fun way you are helping your kids focus on gratitude, I would love to hear about it!

Delaney and I spent some time doing an art project together, just the two of us.  She loves doing free art exploration, but had been asking to do a “project” for a couple days.  I showed her a couple of the projects geared toward Kindergartners and First Graders at Deep Space Sparkle (an awesome kids’ art blog!).  She decided on the Scarecrow Watercolor and Collage project.  Here’s her finished project, which took us about an hour to complete:

So cute, right?  She was immensely pleased with how this turned out!  We basically followed the instructions at Deep Space Sparkle, first drawing the hills, sun, and clouds with oil pastels.  Delaney spent a long time carefully painting her farmland with watercolors.  While the background dried, we worked on cutting and assembling the scarecrow.  I did make her some little tracing templates for the shirt, pants, and hat.  She rummaged through our box of scrapbooking paper scraps to choose just the right outfit for the scarecrow.  Last step was adding buttons and taping the whole scarecrow to a craft stick.  We used a generous amount of white glue to attach the scarecrow to the background.

While we waited for the glue to dry, we read one of my favorite fall books, Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant.

The illustrations in the book are gorgeous, and I enjoy the simple, poetic descriptions of life from a scarecrow’s perspective.

Hope you are enjoying some beautiful autumn days in your neck of the woods!

Happy playing!