At what point did YOU add to OPGTR?

[kwickimom]

Just thinking ahead here because I have some down time for once :) For those that added FLL, WWE, and/or AAS to OPG did you wait until lesson 140? If you started earlier could you tell me why?

[FairProspects]

I don't know how helpful this will be, but I can tell you that we are on Lesson 85ish and we have NOT added to it yet. I consciously wanted to focus on soldifying reading skills before moving to spelling, writing & grammar.

[Satori]

We started AAS a bit before lesson 30. (Basically we started AAS and OPG at the same time, but since she already knew her sounds, we did all 30 OPG lessons in one day).

 

We started FLL and WWE at lesson 90, as we started them January 2010. I wish we had started a wee bit earlier though.

[Cindyz]

We started them all at once in May when he was about 5.5. We started at lesson 30 in OPG because he already knew the beginning sounds. He was able to write his name at that time but not writing words/letters consistently. Now we are on lesson 68 in OPG, 28 in FLL and Week 12 in WWE. He's doing great! He likes WWE and calls it the story book. He also likes FLL. We worked on handwriting a bit, but FLL and WEE require very little writing from them.

[kwickimom]

We started AAS a bit before lesson 30. (Basically we started AAS and OPG at the same time, but since she already knew her sounds, we did all 30 OPG lessons in one day).

 

We started FLL and WWE at lesson 90, as we started them January 2010. I wish we had started a wee bit earlier though.

 

Hmmmm....AAS right alongside of OPG. I read your blog and didnt put that part together. I think I might like that idea :)

[kwickimom]

We started them all at once in May when he was about 5.5. We started at lesson 30 in OPG because he already knew the beginning sounds. He was able to write his name at that time but not writing words/letters consistently. Now we are on lesson 68 in OPG, 28 in FLL and Week 12 in WWE. He's doing great! He likes WWE and calls it the story book. He also likes FLL. We worked on handwriting a bit, but FLL and WEE require very little writing from them.

 

What is your schedule like for all 3? Did you start a handwriting program at the same time?

[Cindyz]

We plan to do school all year and we do lessons every day. We take days off when we want/need to, birthdays, holidays, field trips, fun days. Our lessons take an hour and a half to two hours per day. We do OPG 5 days a week. Obviously we don't do a new lesson every day. I stick with a lesson until I feel like he has it down pretty well before moving on. For awhile we might be on a single lesson for 3 or 4 days, but we don't do the same thing over and over. I always review 2 previous lessons quickly and then I might switch up the current lesson we're working on either in the book, with magnetic tiles, etc. Lately, we've been doing 2 review and 1 new because he's picking it up a little faster. About 10 lessons ago, I changed his reading time to include 20 minutes of reading aloud to me. I checked out a giant stack of books from the library that I knew he could read with the skills he has and we sit for 20 minutes and he reads. I think this is one of the best things we've implemented for reading. It helped him to make the connection that this is why we're doing what we're doing!

 

We do FLL two times per week. With the way our schedule works, we'll have FLL 1 done by the end of this school year.

 

We do WWE two times per week. Originally, we were doing it 4 days per week and he misses doing it as often and has been asking for it. I decided to drag it out a little though because I've heard the WWE can make some leaps eventually and he is only officially in K so there's really no rush.

 

At the same time we started OPG, I worked with him daily for about 10 minutes each day with print writing. I should have just gone straight to cursive. We switched to Cursive First and have been working on cursive for a few weeks now. We just do about 10 minutes a day, but again he's asking to learn more and more letters but I don't want to overload him.

 

I think there is a fine line when they are this age. I don't want to overwhelm him, yet when I pull back to slow down, he asks for more, more, more.

[Laurel]

With the older, I started FLL and WWE when she was really reading fluently. OPG lessons were mostly review of phonics she had already picked up from her own reading, and she requested to do 2 lessons a day. This was probably around lesson 160-180-ish in OPG. We did not start spelling until a few months after we had finished OPG. I did not want to add unnecessary busywork, and I had a feeling she would be a natural speller. (So far, that has been right, and our spelling work is very laid back, informal, using Natural Speller as a guide.)

 

With the younger, I started AAS alongside OPG. He's a completely different learner than his sister, and I knew he would benefit from the systematic, hands-on approach of AAS, and I wanted to start it from the beginning. (It also works as review and reinforcement as he learns to read, which he also needs.) I plan to wait to begin FLL and WWE until he is reading very fluently.

 

(For the record, I found FLL and WWE both very easy to accelerate. We condensed a lot of FLL, and always did 2 days of WWE in 1 day, which we may not have done had we begun earlier, but I really wanted to get the reading solid before adding in other things.)

[Cindyz]

I just wanted to add that I learned something implementing some of the Ambleside literature to our line up. Ambleside will take several books and break them up over time. Many of them are books that you could easily sit and read and finish with them in just a few days or a week or two. At first I thought it was weird to have so many books in progress but then I realized that it was really adding to his retention. If we had read through the book and finished it as fast as we could, would he understand it? yes. Would he retain much of it within a few months time? no. There are read alouds that he LOVED and read just a couple months ago, but when I make a reference to them, he has no idea what I'm talking about. In contrast, we are on Chapter 8 of Paddle to the Sea and we only read about one chapter a week and he remembers EVERYTHING from the beginning chapters (geography, science, etc) like we read it yesterday. Plus if we finish a curriculum too soon, I'll have to find something else to go to next and it will probably be just a different version of much of what we've already done to ensure retention.

 

Over time I'm learning, slow and steady.....

 

All of this to say, I think you can implement them when you want and take them slow, savor them, let the lessons really simmer and sink in.

[kwickimom]

I just wanted to add that I learned something implementing some of the Ambleside literature to our line up. Ambleside will take several books and break them up over time. Many of them are books that you could easily sit and read and finish with them in just a few days or a week or two. At first I thought it was weird to have so many books in progress but then I realized that it was really adding to his retention. If we had read through the book and finished it as fast as we could, would he understand it? yes. Would he retain much of it within a few months time? no. There are read alouds that he LOVED and read just a couple months ago, but when I make a reference to them, he has no idea what I'm talking about. In contrast, we are on Chapter 8 of Paddle to the Sea and we only read about one chapter a week and he remembers EVERYTHING from the beginning chapters (geography, science, etc) like we read it yesterday. Plus if we finish a curriculum too soon, I'll have to find something else to go to next and it will probably be just a different version of much of what we've already done to ensure retention.

 

Over time I'm learning, slow and steady.....

 

All of this to say, I think you can implement them when you want and take them slow, savor them, let the lessons really simmer and sink in.

 

 

THANK you for this!

[mommy4ever]

We were supposed to wait? LOL.. I didn't know that. I just jumped in.

 

I started OPGTR while waiting for AAS to arrive. We did WWE and FLL at the same time. We skipped lots of letter sounds in the OPGTR as we went over them in AAS and she was 'fluent'. We are still plugging along in all of them :) Making leaps and bounds of progress in reading fluency.