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We have done the first lesson in AAR


Dolphin
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I have never done any type of curriculum review before, this is my first shot at it. Also, as a disclaimer, I am in no way benefiting from a program that I guess they have for people, I am just a customer. I use and love AAS with my 8 year old ds.

 

It was a great success, I am about 90% happy with it. We sat down and started off by singing the alphabet song while dd (4in less than a month) pointed to all of the letters.

 

Then we read the poem for the letter A. She liked it, we pointed out A's. The illustrations are great.

 

After that we moved onto our craft sheet. Here is my first negative niggle. On the back of the craft sheet are the instructions and the list of supplies. It suggest (optional, but would be cute) googly eyes. I didn't have any googly eyes or glue on hand. So we just colored. I had read through the teacher manual the night before and there was not any mention of supplies in the manual. I think it would be nice to at least list it in the teachers manual. What would be even nicer would be a page before the lesson plans started listing all the craft items by lesson. As it is, I will need to go page by page through the craft book. Not a BIG deal, but could be better.

 

We then got out the play dough and made a letter A out of it, fun.

 

Next, she got introduced to Ziggy the zebra. I went through the suggested introduction and then we played a game together. She was laughing, hugging Ziggy and so happy. For anyone thinking about not doing the puppet part of the program...DON"T, it was great! My daughter is so excited to be learning how to read with Ziggy.

 

Then we read a story together and she had Ziggy on her hand for that one.

 

So, by and large, I am thrilled that we took the plunge and got AAR. If people want I will post again when we have done a few more lessons.

 

Nicole

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Guest aquiverfull

Sounds great! Glad you and your dd are enjoying the program. We plan to start on Monday, but my girls have been begging me to start, I want to have a little more time to prepare though. So today I sufficed them by doing the 2nd free ebook. They loved it. And I second the suggestion for the puppet. My girls have played with Ziggy so much since he first arrived on Monday.

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My 4 yo loves Ziggy I'm glad I got the puppet. The game in the first lesson is really fun and we've played it several times already.

 

A supply list would be a nice addition and that's been my only complaint so far. After realizing I needed googly eyes for lesson 1 (luckily I had some) I looked through the next several lessons for supplies to prepare better.

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  • 2 weeks later...

AAR is still going well here, but I just thought that I would let you know that I contacted them about the supply list idea. They e-mailed me right back, made the said supply list and said it was a good idea. I thought that was pretty good on the customer service side of things.:lol:

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Guest aquiverfull

I saw Merry post the supply list over at the chatterbee.

 

We are loving AAR here. The kids are having a blast. It's one of the most pleasurable programs we've used.

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http://www.thechatterbee.com/forum/topics/aar-tip-and-suggestion

 

We are loving AAR! We just finished the letter G today and it has just been a blast. My daughter knows her letters and her sounds so we just use the letter sheet as a craft. The main reason we are using AAR is for the language exploration parts. She is learning a lot and having fun especially with Ziggy the Zebra.

 

(Hint: For the letter G we did not have sand, so we used some gold glitter glue. Tomorrow for the letter H we will use our blue glitter glue. We use what we have.)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Anyone know why the capital and lowercase letters are introduced separately instead of together?

 

Well, since I was one of those kids that always had to know the why's, what's and how's, I looked it up myself. Posting this in case anyone else is like me :D.

 

The below quote is from Romalda Spalding's book The Writing Road to Reading pg. 29:

 

Be sure the lower-case letters are well learned before introducing all the capital letters. Some capital letters are needed early, such as the first letters in each child's name. Children should be taught the rules for the use of capital letters and be required to give the reason each time they use a capital. When children learn that a capital is used only where the rules of English require it, they will not insert capitals indiscriminately.
Brilliant :)! Edited by Guest
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Thanks for the update. My son and I are also having a lot of fun with the program.

 

I saw Merry post the supply list over at the chatterbee.

 

We are loving AAR here. The kids are having a blast. It's one of the most pleasurable programs we've used.

 

This was so great of them, I thought I read that Marie plans to put this list in the next print run. I love how open she is to suggestions.

 

http://www.thechatterbee.com/forum/topics/aar-tip-and-suggestion

 

We are loving AAR! We just finished the letter G today and it has just been a blast. My daughter knows her letters and her sounds so we just use the letter sheet as a craft. The main reason we are using AAR is for the language exploration parts. She is learning a lot and having fun especially with Ziggy the Zebra.

 

(Hint: For the letter G we did not have sand, so we used some gold glitter glue. Tomorrow for the letter H we will use our blue glitter glue. We use what we have.)

 

Love the idea for glitter glue. I'll have to remember that when we get to letter G. We've been moving slowly because we all got the stomach flu, then my oldest got a head cold, and now I'm having to go in for a bunch of stomach tests. My son loves the craft pages, but I'm not sure if I have any sand around here, so this will be a great substitute and I'm sure my dd has glitter glue around here some where.

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