Sound of the Week

Nicole and I have been going in a little bit of a different direction with her learning lately. For a while, I was doing unit studies using a particular book or topic. Remember our beach study and Mouse Paint? I sort of stopped doing any "on purpose" learning/teaching for a few months. I don't know. I guess I lost my motivation for some reason. Recently however, we have jumped back on the learning bandwagon and it's been great.

Nicole is very solid in her knowledge of the alphabet and letter sounds. She started sounding words out while we were reading a few months ago. So, I have switched, for right now, from unit studies to a knew curriculum using Sound of the Week. We have almost completed week two. Week one was the letter combination (Amanda...help me, what it is called?) "ck" We looked at all kinds of words that have the "ck" combination, such as clock, truck, duck, etc. Clock was our main theme word. Most of the books and activities we did surrounded the word clock.

This past week has been the letter combo "ee" as in week, sleep, bee, sheep. I chose to use the word week as our theme word and we've been working, a little, on the days of the week. We have also been reading a lot about trees. I really like this sound of the week idea because I see that it's already helping her with sounding words out. Instead of sounding out the word duck as "d-u-c-k" She knows the "ck" is one sound, not two.

With this, we have also been practicing our handwriting. We have not put a lot of effort into this yet. I found some cool pre-handwriting worksheets at this site. (btw...that site is cool for my other mommas out there. There are all sorts of planning sheets for your home, great handwriting practice, math, science and more).

Nicole did ok writing her "c" and "k" last week, but she has rocked the paper and marker this week with the letter "e". Yesterday we were practicing and she said, "Mommy, I want to write my "e" all by myself. I didn't write and example of a dotted "e" for her to follow at all. Check it out.

We also put up a Learning Tree. Each week we learn a new sound, we'll put that sound on a leaf or an apple and stick it to the tree. Last night at dinner, Nicole told her daddy about the tree and said we have "ee" and "ck" up there right now. She seems pretty proud of it.

I realize some of this maybe a little advanced sounding and pushy. I sort of figure that even if she forgets all of this and has to re-learn it, it should be easier the second time around because her brain has already seen these things. In the meantime, I might as well teach her while she enjoys learning. We do our learning time during Hannah's first nap. We have a few minutes of handwriting and sound practice, read a couple books, and do a little craft. I think we both treasure that time together.