When do I start? Advice and feedback on curriculum choices

[highspirits]

Hello! I've been lurking here for years but finally have a homeschooling question! I'm asking for opinions on when to start buying curriculum for my son.

 

My son is 3.5, 4 in August. We've never done any formal learning because I'm a strong believer in the magic of childhood play etc etc. I plan to homeschool him (and his younger siblings).

 

Here's where he is right now:

- He knows how to count to at least 20, recognizes numbers to 10. He understands which numbers are bigger than others and can do simple 'addition' and 'subtraction' dragonbox numbers style (he'll narrate "I have two fives and I need a nine so I need to put them together and swipe one off the top") .

- He knows his letters names but not his sounds because that's never really come up in general conversation. He says he wants me to teach him to read.

- He makes a decent attempt at writing letters (but I've never shown him properly so I'm sure he's forming them wrong, he just looks and draws what he sees) and has shown at lot of interest in writing things lately, asking me what letter are in a word he wants.

- He loves board games and can follow rules really well. Audio books and read alouds are favorite.

- He does not like being quizzed (i.e. He will basically never answer a direct question that shows what he knows)

 

These are the things I've been drawn to and would like to start him with at some point:

Miquon

Brave writer

Logic of English foundations

 

Would any of these work with where he is right now? I'm happy to wait, but I also don't want to leave it too late and have the skip the beginning levels or something. Plus I'm kind of stalling out on letter sounds in particular because I was never taught phonics and I honestly don't know what letter sounds to teach! Like 'T' is obvious except his name starts with a 'Th' and he starts giving me weird looks because it doesn't make sense :) and I don't know if I shouldn't d be concerned about him forming letters however he wants.

Any thoughts or advice for me? Thanks in advance if you got this far :)

 

 

 

 

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[Slache]

I would buy the Cuisenaire Rods for Miquon and let him play with them. My son learned far more from the rods themselves than from the program.

 

Read The ABCs And All Their Tricks or The Logic of English (book not curriculum) to educate yourself on phonetics.

[Syllieann]

You could start miquon orange now. Just go slowly. Get the lab sheet annotations and watch the videos on education unboxed.

 

You could probably start loe, but writing might progress faster than he is able. I would do aar plus a separate handwriting for a child that age so that each thread could progress independently, but if you really want loe, just be open to making adjustments for handwriting. DIY letter tiles, sand, and other similar things might need to be used in place of standard on-paper writing.

 

You don't need bravewrite yet.

[Ellie]

You could wiggle in some Spalding. :-) You can show him how to draw circles properly (beginning at 2 on the clock, down to 6, around to 9, up to 12 and back to 2), using his finger in chocolate pudding or in sand, and vertical lines from top to bottom, and horizontal lines in the direction that we read and write (left to right). And you can teach him some letters, which he'd write with his finger as he says the sounds.

 

All you need for Spalding is the manual (Writing Road to Reading) and a set of phonogram cards. That's all you'd ever have to buy to teach your children to read and write and spell.

 

You could do Mathematics Made Meaningful, which uses Cuisenaire rods and task cards; beginning activities include things like putting all the rods on the floor in a pile and sorting them by color, messing up the piles and then sorting by size. Hey! Same piles! :-) You just go through the task cards gently as he is willing. Rainbow Resources sells it.

 

There's also the Wonder Number Game, a very fun "game" that uses a 100s board and colored chips to teach all sorts of things.

[highspirits]

I would buy the Cuisenaire Rods for Miquon and let him play with them. My son learned far more from the rods themselves than from the program.

 

Read The ABCs And All Their Tricks or The Logic of English (book not curriculum) to educate yourself on phonetics.

Thank you, I think I'll definitely get the rods and start there. I actually have read the logic of English book, now that I think about it. I guess it went in one ear and out the other! I am going to try revisiting that.

 

 

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[highspirits]

You could start miquon orange now. Just go slowly. Get the lab sheet annotations and watch the videos on education unboxed.

 

You could probably start loe, but writing might progress faster than he is able. I would do aar plus a separate handwriting for a child that age so that each thread could progress independently, but if you really want loe, just be open to making adjustments for handwriting. DIY letter tiles, sand, and other similar things might need to be used in place of standard on-paper writing.

 

You don't need bravewrite yet.

I appreciate the response! Since Miquon and the labs sheets and stuff aren't super pricey, I might invest just so that I have it when he gets comfortable playing with the rods. I'll see if it's a natural progression for him.

The way I understood it (I could be way off!) I thought LOE included lots of adaptions in the handwriting anyway (like the tiles and sand ideas you suggested) which is one of the reasons I was drawn to it. I'll look at that further! AAR was weirdly unappealing to me when I looked at it but perhaps I'll give it a second chance :)

 

 

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[Slache]

AAS and LOE are both Spalding spinoffs, as is Reading Lessons Through Literature which is what we use.

 

Miquon is available on CurrClick which sells PDFs for very little. You could get away with just Orange and Annotations for $12, I believe. I would not use Miquon with a child so young and would suggest you check out Education Unboxed if you want something more than play.

[jaredluvsjoanie]

You could wiggle in some Spalding. :-) You can show him how to draw circles properly (beginning at 2 on the clock, down to 6, around to 9, up to 12 and back to 2), using his finger in chocolate pudding or in sand, and vertical lines from top to bottom, and horizontal lines in the direction that we read and write (left to right). And you can teach him some letters, which he'd write with his finger as he says the sounds.

 

All you need for Spalding is the manual (Writing Road to Reading) and a set of phonogram cards. That's all you'd ever have to buy to teach your children to read and write and spell.

 

You could do Mathematics Made Meaningful, which uses Cuisenaire rods and task cards; beginning activities include things like putting all the rods on the floor in a pile and sorting them by color, messing up the piles and then sorting by size. Hey! Same piles! :-) You just go through the task cards gently as he is willing. Rainbow Resources sells it.

 

There's also the Wonder Number Game, a very fun "game" that uses a 100s board and colored chips to teach all sorts of things.

Genuinely curious, Ellie. What is the reasoning behind learning to draw circles clockwise? I am asking because: 1) I have always done --and taught-- the opposite, and 2) cursive writing goes counter-clockwise for O's, A's, etc. Am I missing something really important?

[Ellie]

Genuinely curious, Ellie. What is the reasoning behind learning to draw circles clockwise? I am asking because: 1) I have always done --and taught-- the opposite, and 2) cursive writing goes counter-clockwise for O's, A's, etc. Am I missing something really important?

 

You are correct; I misspoke. It has been a long time since I taught a young child how to write. :blushing:

[rebbyribs]

I don't know much about the Logic of English, but their book Doodling Dragons is great for teaching letter sounds and appropriate for 3-4 years old.

[jaredluvsjoanie]

:) No problem, Ellie! I was just wanting to be sure I wasn't totally messing up something vital. I'm pretty new to this forum, but from what I've read, your opinion is valued around these parts.

[Dudley]

We have really enjoyed Logic of English with my son.  We started with MFW K when he was almost 5  I find that it makes learning the sounds fun.  You can lean more towards learning about the topic of the week or more towards learning the sound and blending.  Pick and chose what interests you.  

This year (6yo) I found LOE We started in B and am now doing C I'm loving it for my active boy. He is not near as eager to read as it sounds like your son is, but LOE knows active boys!!   There are so many different activities to engage them.  He even wants to repeat activities that I would expect he would have had enough of  because of the effort to do the reading , but he likes the challenge or fun of it and wants to do it again!  I have skipped the handwriting exercises so far.  But may start to include more as his handwriting develops.  We use a white board for the spelling part but you could use letter tiles too.

Logic of English will walk you through learning phonics yourself too.  I use the AAS app to practice learning the multiple sounds that some of the phonograms have

I didnt use Level A so cant speak to that.

[HTRMom]

I'm new to this forum. My son is three months younger than yours and sounds somewhat similar, so I'm interested in the responses! I just ordered the Kumon basic tracing workbook for him and he's loving it. I also bought 100 Easy Lessons and Phonics Pathways. Pathways starts with a couple of little games that he seems to like. We've really only started the lessons in the last two weeks, so I can't say whether it will be on-level for him.

 

I think for letters you are supposed to teach the basic obvious consonant sounds (hard c and g) and the short vowel sounds first. But I'm 0% experienced!

[Tawlas]

I also want to recommend Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row volumes!  My daughter will be 4 on Saturday and we've had a really great time reading through the books in B4FIAR this past school year!  She loves that she gets to do school like the big kids, and I love that it's so casual, with very little prep.  Its prompted me to do things with her that I have never thought of before (like visit a jewellry shop and a dry cleaners and feed our ducks bread crumbs lol)  Just lots of discussion and sharing good books.  Looking forward to starting volume 1 of FIAR !

[TinyTribe]

I remember being in your shoes with my daughter when she was that age! I would suggest before investing in anything to start with crods and let him play. For now just follow education unboxed since he is so little. For proper letters Handwriting Without Tears has an app that we use and you can follow that to learn the right way and fun wording and then use flour/salt/sand in a tray and just keep working on fine motor skills. I wouldn't worry about putting pencil to paper just yet. And as for learning to read we personally used AAR Pre-Reading at that age and my daughter did love it. I will start with my son who is 3.5 soon. They do have the one year return if you don't love it and buy through their site (allaboutlearningpress.com). But if you don't want to do that yet they do have an app that teaches letter sounds. I would focus on the first 26 phonograms first which is just the most common sound of the letters of the alphabet and I'm pretty sure one of their apps has just those and not all the other sounds too. Oh also I've never used it but I really think The Peaceful Preschool looks fantastic and they have a sample for letter A unit. Hope some of this helps. :) And just enjoy cuddling, reading, and playing as much as possible! I still remember a veteran saying, "enjoy this time before you HAVE to do school." :)

[TinyTribe]

Oh I would also like to add my daughter really enjoyed the dot to dot books to reinforce counting and to help her draw lines. I really think that helped her a lot at that age! She would use crayons.

Edited March 23, 2017 by TinyTribe

[8filltheheart]

My response is that you still don't need to feel pressure to do anything formal. I didn't do any formal preschool with any of my kids. It was a deliberate decision. I am a firm believer in long days of imaginative play. I did spend lots of time reading aloud to them. When they started K, they started with the alphabet and numbers.

 

My kids have all ended up being strong students. My youngest is currently a 1st grader. When she started K last yr, just like the 7 before her, she started with learning her alphabet sounds. At the beginning of 1st, she was reading Thornton Burgess's books like Adventures of Chatterer the Red Squirrel. (This is her current book: https://www.amazon.com/Third-Wish-Fairy-Realm-No/dp/006009589X/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=006009589X&pd_rd_r=2336WWA4JAJYR09XP9J7&pd_rd_w=wCWA3&pd_rd_wg=zpYns&psc=1&refRID=2336WWA4JAJYR09XP9J7 )

 

Just an alternative POV.

[ReadingMama1214]

Don't feel pressured at all. Just follow his lead. My first (a girl) was asking to learn to read at 3. But my boy isn't as interested. He just started asking to draw letters so I got him a dry erase tracing book. He'll count so we work on that in a fun way. Same with letter sounds. I honestly just use Leap frog Letter Factory for it.

 

For my daughter we did AAR Pre-Reading and switched to the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. For handwriting we did dry erase and HWOT. For math we have a giant set of counting bears and activity cards, cuisinaire rods, hundreds blocks, geoboards, and pattern blocks. We did the videos in educationunboxed with her.