In the order of my dd's preference: 1. Concentration game at http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html for learning consonant blends 2. Phonogram game at http://talibiddeenjr.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/phonics-gameboardphonogram-gameboard/ 3. Consonant Blends game at http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/ 4. CVC word games and Consonant Diagraph games from Lanternfish ESL at www.bogglesworldesl.com HTH ~ Nandini

That is correct. Singapore students start grade1 in January after they turn 6. If it helps, this is the link to the math S&S followed in Singapore schools (link). You may want to compare it to the S&S on the singaporemath.com web site. ~ Nandini

My dd has sweaty palms and is also very fidgety, so we have the same problem. What we use is a number track like this to keep the rods in a straight line. It doesn't help when making rectangles and squares, though. :-(

I agree with the PP. Webster's Speller contains many lists of multisyllabic words and goes upto the 12th grade level. You may test her on some words at random and see how she does. Then if you feel she needs help for (say) 4 and 5 syllable words, then you can work on those with her. HTH ~ Nandini

Hi, Could you please share some of the sources (and page nos. if you could) for the copywork/narration sources that you have identified on your own? It would be a BIG help! TIA ~ Nandini

You have got many great suggestions in the posts above. I second Peggy Kaye's books. At age 5, you could choose to do all lessons orally. i. For LA, after you finish your phonics course, you could do read-alouds and oral narration, ask comprehension questions, oral questions related to basic grammar (identify names of people/places/things, action verbs etc) and capitalization ("If I were to write the name Lisa, which 'L' would I use? Capital or small? Which 'i'? etc.) ii. For spelling, you could make letter tiles (5 each for the vowels and 2 each for the consonants) and ask him to choose the right letters for any word and properly arrange them. The ones I made have lowercase on one side and uppercase on the other. iii. For Math, you may do the worksheets orally (tell him to point out the correct answer choice) or buy him some ink stamps, so that he can stamp a circle/star/tick mark on the correct answer. iv. You may also play Phonics and Math games (card games or board games) that you can print off the net onto cardstock and laminate. HTH ~ Nandini

Hi Fay, Thank you very much for describing your method. Could you please share which copywork sources you used for K and 1st? We have not started any History or Science yet and our current read-aloud (Narnia) will probably be difficult for dd to narrate. I would appreciate some suggestions. TIA ~ Nandini

At which grade is it optimum to start IEW? Thanks.

Hi, Apart from all the points raised by others above, I would also consider the possibility that one day, my child may have to teach her child(ren), and if I don't equip her with these skills today, she will be severly handicapped to perform her job then. I don't want to have her come to these forums one day asking for help because she is "not a mathy person"... Hope I helped in some way :-P ~ Nandini

Sorry to hijack this thread, but could someone please tell me how WRTR teaches the parts of speech? I had borrowed the WRTR book through the inter-library-loan late last year and I remember nouns and verbs being taught in a fairly simple manner, but I cannot recall the specifics now and I forgot to take notes for that section. Any info will be appreciated. Thanks! Nandini

This thread and this post has more info and opinions.

I have used both with dd. Donald Potter's descriptions of the programs are quite accurate. Blend Phonics is the easiest program to implement. I used this first because I was never taught phonics and was very intimidated by it all. We finished Blend Phonics (BP) in about 3 months when dd was 4.75yo. It took dd from knowing only the sounds of the letters to reading at a 2nd grade level. BP covers all the sounds in the English language and I would say it can rival many of the better commercial phonics programs. We have started Webster's Speller (WS) early this year. It took me several days to read the initial lessons AND read and re-read all of Elizabeth B's posts on this board (related to the WS) and I still couldnt get a grip on how to teach it. I think I have got it now and would agree that BP was way easier. WS is much (much) more comprehensive, than BP, though. It is for teaching reading and spelling. So if you start with WS, you will not need any other phonics or spelling program. BP only goes upto 2-syllable words. WS has upto 5 syllable words nicely divided into categories based on which syllable is stressed. While BP can, and has, been used for spelling, it is only meant for the first grade and is to be taught over a period of 3-4 months. WS is meant to be used upto the 12th grade. BP teaches the child to blend. So 'cat' is taught as 'kuh' + 'a' = 'ka', then 'ka' + 't' = 'kat'. WS teaches through syllables, so the sound of c (kuh) is taught first, then the syllable 'at' is taught next, and finally the word 'cat' is taught as 'kuh' + 'at'. I hope you can see the difference. In this sense, the program 'Word Mastery', also available from Donald Potter's site, is similar to WS. Currently we are doing Word Mastery for reading (sort of re-emphasizing the phonics sounds) and the Speller for reading+spelling. I used Blend Phonics first because it was the easiest to teach, but, as Donald Potter describes it, Word Mastery is indeed the finest phonics program available. imho it is comparable to the best, most popular, most expensive commercial phonics programs available today. Another benefit is that Word Mastery is typed in a large font, so your dc can read directly from the printout, rather than having you write the words on a white board, like we have to do with Blend Phonics. It does have the same directional guidance built it, because it initially separates the initial consonant from the phonogram, like: c at (and later)c ake and then includes a review of phonograms in which the spaces are removed. To those that are considering Blend Phonics, I would suggest you print out and start Word Mastery instead and then follow it up with the Speller. As regards whether it helps with dyslexia, I cannot say, but Donald Potter's experience and recommendation on that point should be enough to convince you, I hope :-) All of the phonics programs he has taken the trouble to type up and make available on his site are ones that he has personally used for remedial reading and correcting whole-word dyslexia. HTH, ~ Nandini

I may be too late, but how does this easter egg thing work? Do we have to visit each page on currclick.com? Do we have to make any purchases? TIA ~ Nandini

I dont know about that 'other' thread, but there are three Asian manipulatives. The two most common ones are the Chinese suà npán abacus and the Japanese soroban abacus. The third, not-so-common, is the Korean method of finger-counting, called chisanbop. The Chinese and Japanese abaci are very inexpensive (atleast in Singapore) - less than S$20 in bookshops. Hope that helps. ~ Nandini

Thanks, matryoshka! We have Grammar Rock but dd hasnt taken to it as much as she took to '3 is a magic number' :-) I googled Mad Libs for the first time today. I think I will need some help to implement this at home. Is there any online (preferably free) version of this game? TIA ~ Nandini

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. Unfortunately we dont have FLL in the library here. I've found a vintage book called "Talking with the Pencil" which is a gentle introduction to grammar and writing. We started it last week and the first few lessons went well. I think we will continue this through kindergarten (or atleast until she turns 6). DD likes the Brian P Cleary books which we get from the library and knows nouns, verbs and pronous thanks to them. I will search for the Ruth Heller books. I think I will order MCT now and read it through to see whether we can start it slowly towards the latter part of this year. My problem is that Singapore schools expect a high level of grammar knowledge (types of pronouns, verb tense, etc) right from grade 1 and dd will be in grade 1 from Jan-2011. Thank you again :-) ~ Nandini

Anabel, I have not seen MCT materials, but I understand the Island level is for 3rd grade? I am surprised (and happy) that it is working for your 6 yo (who, i suppose, is a 1st grader?) Do you plan to have her do the writing assignments yet? Or do you plan to use it only for familiarization with grammar at this point? I plan to buy MCT and was looking for something to introduce the parts of speech etc in the meantime. But if MCT works at 1st grade, then I would rather buy it now. Thanks, ~Nandini

Hi Tara, FWIW, here is what we do. I made sandpaper letters and had dd trace over them with her index finger. I also had her practice letter formation on the black board first and then write on paper. I also traced each letter on her left palm with my index finger and then had her write on paper. I also gave verbal clues while she was forming each letter, such as "half circle, go up, come down and stop!". You have got good suggestions for this. I have her trace over the model sentence and then re-write the same sentence below on her own. Start with really small sentences like "A dog barks." or "Mary runs." etc. Or start with just a single word. You may use unline paper if you just want to focus on word spacing. We use coloured guidelines (pink and blue). Or you can make the baseline pink and the midline and topline gray. HTH ~ Nandini

Hi, When you say 'print', do you mean that you write the letters by hand? Or do you take a computer printout of the HWoT font onto pre-lined paper? If its the second way, I am interested to know how you align the text in HWoT font with the lines on the paper. TIA ~ Nandini

Are you referring to the Blue series or the Light Blue series? Also, for independent work (like the OP meant) which series would be better? TIA ~ Nandini

Although the G-D italics workbooks are not very expensive, it is possible to learn italics manuscript and then italics cursive using just StartWrite and some information from the internet. I decided to teach my dd italics, because although my cursive is pretty good, it used to deteriorate when I wrote lengthy papers in high school. I wanted to teach her a style that had the best trade-off of speed v/s legibility. I have taught myself to write in italics this past month and am still practicing. I also got StartWrite mainly because I like the coloured guidelines (for dd, not me). Anyway, long story short, this is the list of free resources I used: 1. briem.net - a font, an excellent tutorial and lots of practice pages, although I like the look of the G-D font better than the Briem font. 2. Penny Gardner's italics videos on youtube.com and samples of her italics workbook on her web site pennygardner.com. The sequence in which the italics manuscript letters are taught (based on similar shapes) is: iltjf vwxz nmhr bpk uy adgq oces The videos are useful to see the various joins in italics cursive and the sequence in which they should be introduced. 3. A good pdf guide to cursive italics joins at this page: http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/area/literacy/qcursive/ This package also includes the Queensland italics font which is quite similar to G-D, but since you already have StartWrite, you dont need to install the font. Just unzip the package and view the cursive.PDF file. HTH ~ Nandini

I started Reception with my 5.5yod last month and while she enjoyed the posters and the colouring and cutting activities, I got bored. I also realized that she wasn't learning anything new. So I've now printed off the Y1a materials and we are doing that. If your child doesnt know numbers and counting yet, doesnt know left/right/above/below/forward/behind etc, then Reception is a good place to start. Otherwise, start in Y1. jmho. EDIT: Sorry, I didnt read your complete post before. With Reception we only used coloured popsicle sticks as manipulatives. There is an activity at the beginning where the child has to make various shapes (chair/table/etc) out of the coloured sticks and match the colour of each stick to that in the poster. I also have a regular 100-bead abacus from Ikea as well as a RightStart-type 100-bead abacus which I plan to use later. Based on what I've read on the MEP yahoogroup list, people use various manipulatives - coloured disks/counters/coins. You can also use pebbles, marbles (if that is safe with your dc), a regular 100-bead abacus (Melissa&Doug). MEP is said to be very flexible that way. BTW, I didnt print any of the posters. We looked at them on the computer. ~ Nandini

I found this italics font that is available for free download. The samples look beautiful and I hope it will be a big help to those who want to create Getty-Dubay-style italics copywork. It is called the Victoria modern cursive font. http://www.education.vic.gov.au/studentlearning/teachingresources/english/handwriting.htm Sample http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/teachlearn/student/alphabetmodele.pdf EDIT: I found another free italics font from down under. It is called the Queensland font and it is available in both print and cursive styles. The package includes a very helpful PDF guide on cursive joins, plus a document editor program which creates the cursive joins (regular document editors like Word wont create the joins but can display the basic cursive font.) Download the zip package here and install SETUP.EXE http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/area/literacy/qcursive/

I have startwrite too and use the GDI (non-cursive) font for making spelling practice and copywork. I plan to transition to the GDI cursive in due course. If you dont want to wait for a used copy to be available, StartWrite is ~$33 from the DrawYourWorld web site (price is ~$40 on the StartWrite web site). Another option is the SchoolFonts package, which includes several manuscript and cursive fonts as well as GDI. Once the fonts are installed onto your computer, you can use them in MS Office, StarOffice or any other word processing software (even the basic free WordPad in Windows). Which font is that?

Hi Medieval Mom, Now I'm confused. I thought the Maxwell books would be equivalent of WWE but now it appears as though they are the equivalent of FLL/PLL. Is this right? Or can it substitute for both WWE and FLL? If not, what would be the vintage-books equivalent of WWE? This sounds good; Mary Hyde's books are a gentle introduction and from what little I saw of Maxwell today, they have the proper definitions of the parts of speech. So doing a lesson (on, say, nouns) from Hyde's book and following it up with a lesson on nouns from the Maxwell book would work well (I think). EDITED: Sorry, I was looking at another Maxwell book "New language lessons : an elementary grammar and composition" which has the definitions, etc. The Primary Lessons book is very similar to Mary Hyde's books and to Sheldon's PLL. ~ Nandini