UNLEASHING LITERACY!!!

My 3rd grader is a reluctant reader, so I tried something i call the Umbrella Reading Project. She had to read 6 books each one in a different genre (Folk Tale, Non-Fiction, Sports, Animals, Biography, and Fiction). I got the umbrella from the Scholastic March Monthly Idea. She then had to write a short report on each book. She loves it because get gets to experiment with different types of books. My eldest an 8th grade wants to do one this summer.

My biggest breakthrough has been in the acceptance that the end goal is more important than where my child is compared to others his age. Just because kids are doing this or that in "third grade" doesn't mean that my child is "behind" if he is not at that same place. Sure, it looks good if a child can churn out pages of original writing but what benefit is that to him if it lacks substance and has been robbed of all originality? I want my children to find their individual voices and be able to put words to that, NOT some prescribed level of writing proficiency by a certain age. My children have volumes of great ideas swimming around in their heads and I won't let their inability to get it down on paper block their creativity. I have them dictate to me and they let it all flow out. It's a beautiful thing.

I struggled to find a way for my son to learn his letters. He really had a hard time recognizing them. The only thing that he was really passionate about was Star Wars. I scoured the internet looking for photos of Star Wars that matched each letter of the alphabet and made him flash cards. Within 2 weeks he had mastered the entire set! Whenever we encounter a stumbling block with reading or writing I simply pull from his current interests and the problem is solved! (He's currently working his way through the Magic Tree House series and asks to read them on his own!!)

My daughter had been reading for several years, but was unwilling to actually read a book (we later figured out it was probably that she was afraid that we would stop reading to her if she could read for herself). We weren't worried, but we did want to gently encourage her to start. One day, I had a brilliant insight. I was reading her a children's mystery story, but I stopped just before the culprit was going to be identified. I put the book down right next to her and announced that I had something I had to do. When I walked away, she picked up the book and finished it. She hasn't stopped reading since!

We have a small literature group for high school students. We call it "Pleasure Reading is not an Oxymoron!" We choose our books from the AP or College Board recommended reading lists for college bound students. The students (and parents who wish to) read the book and then we meet for lunch at a local cafe. We discuss the book, including literary concepts and devices, author bio, etc. Sometimes we'll compare and contrast it with another book we've read or watch the movie on which the book was based so we can compare and contrast the two. One time, we read and listened to "The Gift of the Magi" and then did a literary analysis of the short story. We have a bit of pre-reading for the next book at the close of each session.We focus on cultural literacy and references as well as biblical allusions (most members of our group are not biblically literate but enjoy obtaining a more complete understanding of the book). In advance of our meetings, I usually send the students email, asking them to make note of certain literary elements or sending them study guides or bringing literary terms to their attention. Learning to share insights on a book and to enjoy books with friends is a wonderful experience for my teen and his friends (and our meetings are always enjoyable for me, too). We've read Twain, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald, among others. Currently, we are reading "Brave New World." I try to make this group as stress-free and enjoyable as possible, while incorporating the concepts traditionally covered in a high school literature class.

My son is not a big fan of writing. This of course is understandable since he is only in KIndergarten and just learning how to form his letters. However he IS full of stories and ideas. One day he was drawing a detailed picture on the wipe off board. When I asked him about it he went into this long explanation. Right then a "light bulb" went off for ME! I grabbed a notebook and started writing down his story word for word. It was full of big words, adventure, excitement and plot twists. After he was finished I typed his story out and printed it for him. When I read his words back to him, I could see his "light bulb" go off. He was amazed that he could create stories and have them written down for him. This opened up a whole new world for him. I am just sorry my light bulb did not go off sooner. Think of all the stories we have missed.

Today my boys (ages 9 & 6) came up with a clever way to learn Latin: They were quizzing each other by making up "spells" (a la Harry Potter) and trying to guess what the spell would do. They were having SO much fun AND learning Latin. Wish I could take credit for it, but they made it up all on their own! I thought that was pretty cool. :)

I have a 13yo son who just loved to read and write very early on. I think the best (and sometimes hardest) thing I did was to just get out of the way and let him write and read. LOTS! Now that the love is ingrained, we've moved on to honing that love and talent into a tool he can use for the rest of his life. I know the Co-op will be the place to find the whetstone!

I thought my girls would never take to writing stories untill I got the deal with Homeschool Buyers Co-op MY Access has both girls writting and they even look forward to writting;-) The exercises help with their form and gives ideas on what to write. I am also so glad that there is another deal with our Co-op to renew for this year. Way to go!

We participated in a Tapestry of Grace co-op at the Jr. High and Sr. High level, we (the parents) hired a Language Arts college major (she had toddlers and wanted to be at home with her small children). Our hired teacher was wonderful! We met for classes once a week at a local church. Our L/A teacher paid one of the girls to babysit her babies while she taught literature and composition classes. My sons read and evaluated classic literature and memorized literary terms from the time period they were studying concurrently in History. We added speech, composition, grammar, and history with geography to round out the day facilitated by each of the moms. Our composition selection included one year of The One Year Novel curriculum. My oldest son graduated high school last year and is currently in his freshman college year. On his first day of English Lit. class his professor gave a pre-test to test the previous level of knowledge of literary terms. The next class meeting his professor told my son that he got the highest score anyone had ever gotten on that test in any of his classes. We loved our Tapestry of Grace co-op, it prepared my sons very well for college English (and History)!

My daughter loves computer learning "games" and we have done great with Explode the Code we got through the Co-op! I sit next to her while she does it, so she thinks of it as together time and always looks forward to the lessons where you have to read a sentence and determine whether it's true or false. She loves laughing at the false - often silly - sentences. We play a similar game with the others and she gets a big kick out of speculating whether, say, a glass is grass: "that's the tallest, clearest grass I've ever seen!" It slows down our time a lot because she wants to talk through all the wrong answers first and laugh at them, but it's great practice for her.

We started reading to our children in utero. They knew our voices right away and listened intently when we spoke to them. We also rarely used "baby talk" so that they would only hear language being used correctly. We have read to them ever since, and we all look forward to our nighttime reading of "fun books" before bed. We use every opportunity to get books into our lives like afternoon reading outside and books on CD in the car and house as well. Our favorite outing is to the library once or twice a week. Both of our children are voracious readers now on their own. It was easy to incorporate Total Language Plus into our homeschool because they get to read living books, which we all enjoy!

My kindergartener has a hard time sounding out words and has a hard time sitting still! So I taped sheets of paper on the ground and had him play "letter sound hop scotch" We moved letters together to make different groups and now he is able to sound out small words.

Each afternoon we sit down for "Popcorn Literature" I make a bowl of popcorn (the snack sometimes varies) and I read aloud to the kids from a classic novel. Past novels have included, The Lion the witch and wardrobe, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of just to name a few. Right now we are working on , Around the world in 80 days which is really challenging both for it's vocabualry and geographical locations. Dictionary skill s are a byprodict of this book along with Google Earth!
Still to come on our list, 20,000 leagues under the sea and the original The jungle book. Although we don't do any formal quizzing of the story I am always happy to see the stories acted out by stuffed animals or dolls laer while they play.

We didn't focus on formal instruction for reading. We just read out loud a lot and followed David H. Albert's recommendation about respecting the child's agenda and answering questions directly (instead of quizzing). We also had magnetic letters on the fridge which were great for keeping him busy when I needed to do something. He'd bring me letters and I'd tell him, "That's a green M, that's a red S", etc. I'd also ask him to bring me specific letters - like all the yellow Os. I thought it was a fluke the first time he did it successfully at 15 months old! When he was four, we were at a department store browsing through the costume jewelry. He picked up a big gaudy ring with letters on it and said, "M-O-M. That spells "mom". As he put the ring back, he nonchalantly said, "Well, guess I'm readin' now!" He is now 12 and reads voraciously at college level. Now we work more formally on the mechanics of grammar and writing but I really believe that the key to literacy is starting with the love of reading!

My daughter has always hated writing. She is in second grade now and it is still a challenge to get her to write without a disgruntled look on her face lol. One way that we have managed to get her through is by encouraging her to add plenty of pictures to her work. She has always loved drawing and anything artsy. This seems to be working so far, she is getting the work done anyways lol.

For my son it has been the stardarized test scores that say vacabulary and usage of language at13+ as a fifth grader. AS a fourth grader this was only at a 6+ grade level.

We have tried Sonlight's LA and FLL and never liked either one really. We have used Grammar Songs and Schoolhouse Rock, and even MadLibs!, with great results in learning the parts of speech, etc. When it comes to writing/composition, nothing seemed to really fit, for either my children or me. Then I discovered IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing). I LOVE it! My children love it. My 6yo ds even asks to do it! We'll be sticking with it!

Write something...

The best thing I did for my third child (7) was to get Explode the Code subscription to the online activities! He hated the books - he wouldn't want to read or write - EVER! With the program on the computer he was flying through it, begging to do it even on spring break. He is still not a fan of reading or writing, but he can do it if he tries.

Before my children were born I read a lot about homeschool and literacy and my husband and I decided they would be homeschooled and that we would start doing fun educational things right away. So, when they were just toddlers they had plenty of books and I read to them. And then when they were preschool age, about 3, we started using Frontline Phonics to teach the letter sounds and to start reading small books. We also read the Bob Books.

We used to sit at the kitchen table after breakfast and listen to the DVD and sing the songs and look at the flashcards. It took only about 20-30 minutes a day. And when they knew enough letter sounds, we started sounding out words and then sentences in the little books that came with the phonics program and also the Bob Books. They were so thrilled to be able to read a book by themselves. We just kept building on this.

For sight words, I just had them sound out the beginning of the word and then try to figure out the word from the context. If they got stuck, I was right there to help them.

I think they needed help with one or two words. Since about 65% of English is phonetic, they used the phonetic code for most words and the others they were able to sound out the first letter and then could tell what the word was from the context.

We had a period of 4 years when homeschool was interrupted because my husband got laid off and I had to go back to work. They were able to pass into the public school system and do well there. And then we were able to pull them out of public school again and resume homeschool.

I think that a good grounding in reading helped them to survive these transitions.

They are now 12 and 14 and are both very good readers and for the most part enjoy books of all kinds.

My son hates printing. He's 6 y.o. and will literally spend an hour printing his name and complaining the whole time. We have found a great compromise when he is doing his spelling. He can write his letters any size he likes. We get some old lined paper that he writes his letters on. He can write in capitals or little letters, but he has to tell me which he is doing first. He overlaps them and designs things out of them. So far, we are doing letters only, but he "can't wait" to try it with words! I've never had him be excited about anything to do with printing before.

My son hated writing from the very beginning of the writing adventure. He loved science from the start of school, and even before we officially started Kindergarten. Anyway I decided if I could find science to write about, he would at least enjoy the topic. I also decided that if I could find others to judge his writing (instead of me), he might write better and with less complaining.

I was watching Jay Leno one night and saw kids from my town showing off their inventions. I checked into the Invention Convention and discovered that a science journal was part of the requirements to participate. When I called to find out more, I discovered that you had to participate through a school. I decided to go to the kick off at a local school. I called ahead to get permission from the school to attend it. At the event, I met the city coordinator and she gave me a business card. After thinking about their policy, I called her and suggested that the next year, she should allow home schoolers to have their own qualifying event. She suggested we do it that very year and that I could organize it and she would allow 3 home schoolers to be selected to go to the city finals. After thinking about it I decided to do it. I picked home school friendly science teachers to judge it. My son was very excited because he was always inventing things.

It was a win win situation, my son was able to compete but he had to write. He ended up through the years winning again and again at the downtown event including 2 years, he came in First Place in his grade level and won college tuition credits. He used the credit his first quarter at college, along with other scholarship money in honors engineering.

I would encourage other home school mom's to find competitions that are in their child's field of interest that require writing and encourage their students to enter. Even when they do not win, it gives you an opportunity to have another person judge their writing abilities and allows you to be on your child's team by helping them rewrite and improve their writing for a mutual goal.

My son is in college now, writing lab reports and other technical reports this year, totally on his own. He still does not enjoy writing but he is making good grades on his reports. He learned a lot that has helped him in college, through competitions such as deadlines and doing his best work even when it takes lots of hours and late nights to accomplish his goals.

I also want to encourage a parent who sees a competition that is not yet open to home schoolers to talk to the coordinator of the competition and encourage them to let home schoolers participate. Who knows but you might have to step out of your comfort zone (like I did) and help start the event. It has been well worth it, home schoolers are still winning almost every year at the big downtown event of around 500 projects. My son has been a judge at our local home school event and downtown while he was in high school and was too old to participate anymore. Competitions were definitely a win win situation for us and I hope others might discover the same in their home school experiences.