On Tuesday the little nursery Avila attends had been flooded so she stayed home. She doesn’t go Wednesday and Thursday and then on Friday I forgot to send her. I forgot again yesterday and they phoned to see if she was ill! Honestly I can’t believe the things I forget sometimes-but then the three biggies managed to miss the fact she hadn’t gone as well.  I was quite touched that the staff were genuinely concerned in case she had been readmitted to hospital.

Part of the reason I am forgetting to send her is that she is joining in with Ronan’s work more and more. She is beginning to read and while he wrote a letter to his cousin yesterday she was busy practicing letter formation. She does counting and number recognition when he is doing maths and she joins in with catechism and making the big display. She sits with us for story time and even likes to join in with Astronomy sessions or looking at dinosaurs.

With the other home ed families coming over she is joining in with the children in singing and playing. One of the children M is 4 and he and Avila have begun reading the Oxford Reading Tree books together.

What with all that and going off to the chiropractor twice a week I have lost track of Avila going to nursery. She loves it there and has friends so I don’t want to stop her going at this point-but it is something I am wondering whether I should cut down on. Not sure yet. I’ll reconsider after Christmas.

Learning to Read.

I started Ronan with The Oxford Reading Tree Books that a friend lent me. He is about to borrow stages 5 and 6 from her. We have kept all the books he has finished with as her children no longer need them and now it is time for Avila to have a go. She and M are using stage 1 books.

I am also buying in the Usborne Reading Scheme books which are more like ordinary fun story books and not so ’schoolish’ as the ORT. The Usborne books are working well alongside the ORT books.

We started some time ago with learning the alphabet-singing the alphabet song and learning it in British Sign Language. Then there has been a lot of reading to and pointing out words with the children so they get to know what a word looks like.

One of the great things about some of the Usborne books is how tough they are so a little minx like Heleyna can have a great love of books without damaging them too much.

We have found some good sites to help with reading. At the moment we are working through STARFALL reading which the children love and I think it’s a very good site. There’s some Oxford Reading Tree Linked activities on MAGIC KEY. There is other stuff HERE that might be useful, but we haven’t go around to using it yet.

There are books around all the time and I have been encouraging Roni to read to his little sisters and his friends.

Iona is has just read Lord of the Flies and is now embarking on Frankinstein.

One of the aspects of homeschooling I have had to get my head around is reading. I know, it’s obvious that children learn if they have good books to read. I’ve read Charlotte Mason enough to understand about living books and narration. But for a long time I felt that unless a worksheet was complete there was no real evidence they had learned anything-and reading seems so passive. However, I have pulled myself together and insist the children have reading time. It’s worked well. Don’t know why schools aren’t allowed to do it.