My Little Robins

Loving and Learning in the Nest

Engaging Young Learners in American History

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When H was in Kindergarten, I pieced together a curriculum that would make her feel the wonder of learning, but wouldn't seem like the same formal lessons that would soon follow. I wanted Kindergarten to be a good introduction to learning, while still being lighthearted and different than the rest of her schooling. 

This is a sponsored post for Sonlight. I was compensated for this review, but wasn't required to share a positive opinion. These are all my honest thoughts about this product.

Now that Mr. E's Kindergarten year is peeking out over the horizon, I'm looking for options. Piecing something together again honestly sounds exhausting: I'll have another child to educate, and a toddler in tow.  I've been on the lookout for something that is open-and-go, centered around living books, and is not a mini-rendition of the formal lessons to come. Exploring American History: History/Bible/Literature K from Sonlight will be a great option for us, and for your gentle Kindergarten year, too. 

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Kindergarten American History Curriculum

Exploring American History: HBL K is designed specifically for young children ages 5-6 in Kindergarten or first grade. There is an instructor's guide, two volumes of Heroes and Happenings, picture books, and short chapter books.  (We received the instructor's guide and Heroes and Happenings books, but you can get all of the living books included.) Miss H helped me unbox and test out the curriculum, and immediately fell in love with the Heroes and Happenings books. They are colorful books filled with stories from history, ranging from the Vikings to modern history-makers like Temple Grandin. 

Sonlight wanted to create a curriculum with lots of picture books for young children, but knew that keeping the cost down would be difficult. The Heroes and Happenings book solved that problem! The two volumes are well-written and engaging. Miss H has been asking to read them every morning on top of her regular lessons. 

The teacher's guide has a laminated map that can be used while reading through the books with your child. My kids always find maps to be magical, but they don't know that we're easily integrating another subject, geography, as we map different locations around the world. 

History Through Living Books

On top of the Heroes and Happening books, living books are scheduled throughout the week. Some of the books go along with the history topics, and some are general read-alouds. Miss H was so excited to see the book list.  We've found some books that we might read before Mr E's scheduled kindergarten year; we're just too impatient! 

I think the living books appealed so much to my daughter because they are not the same titles that we've been reading for four years. Normally, Kindergarten and early years book lists contain lots of repeats.  While there are some familiar reads here, most of them are new to us. 

One thing I think I will adapt is to skip the comprehension questions, that mostly begin with "what" and "why." Instead, I'll use narration for comprehension. I really like that the teacher's guide says to use the questions if you think your child needs them. Do what works best for your family! There are some discussion questions that get into the ideas of the books, making those ever-important conversations flow easily. 

Bible

Each day has a Bible reading from the One Year Bible for Children. What a gorgeous edition! Several Bible stories are read each day, and there is a new memory verse every week. The Sing the Word CD corresponds to each memory verse to make scripture memory easier. When I've tried to do weekly memory verses in the past, we usually lose momentum in a few weeks. Having the memory verse planned out and written in front of me is crucial for us! 

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Is It a Complete Kindergarten Curriculum? 

Depending on your state's requirements, or your own personal wishes, this curriculum is mostly complete. You can add in math and science from Sonlight, and you'll be all set. You also might want to add in phonics and "the riches." For me, since I like to keep kindergarten informal, it will be plenty of learning for my little guy! 

One thing I love is that it schedules four days of lessons. That is so helpful for busy families  that have activities, enrichment programs, and church groups throughout the week. The teacher's guide is so well-organized that staying on track and doing the daily lessons will take very little prep. 

For busy families, or for those wanting to simplify Kindergarten, this is a curriculum definitely worth looking into. You can request a Sonlight catalog here! 

This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 and over. 

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Teaching Reading With Treadwell Readers

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When we teach children how to read through the Charlotte Mason approach, it is not meant to be a quick process. We can take our time (insert sight of relief). But even though we don't want to rush them from nursery rhymes to chapter books, it has to happen at some point. I often recommend the Reading-Literature Books by Free and Treadwell for making the transition to reading longer stories. These books were a part of our learning-to-read curriculum for Miss H, and we had great success with them. 

This is my final post in this Charlotte Mason Reading Series. You can go back to the beginning of this series here, and catch all the help I've shared, or save it for later. 

Reading Series


What are Reading-Literature Readers?

These readers, which are officially called Reading-Literature, were written in the early 20th century By Harriett Treadwell and Margaret Free. The books  start with the Primer, and continue on through volume eight, although the higher volumes are more difficult to find today. Treadwell was a teacher, principle, and activist who believed that children could be taught to appreciate good literature early on, and that teaching to read contained a few essential principles that are easy to grasp. 

The primer, meant for young children, contains repetitive folk tales that children might be familiar with. Level one includes rhymes, and level two contains fables and fairy tales. 

​Related: Phonics, Whole Language, and Charlotte Mason Reading 


Why I Like These Readers

Besides the obvious point that they contain real literature and get children appreciating literature, I think these are a great next-step reading material for several reasons. 

1. They Repeat Sight Words

No flash cards needed to learn sight words. Sight words don't necessarily follow phonics patterns, but appear often in text, so they're important to know. With the repetitive nature of the primer, sight words are introduced naturally, without needing to "drill and kill" them.  

2. The stories increase in difficulty

The first story in the Primer, the Little Red Hen, starts with 30 simple words. Some of those words are repeated throughout the book. The final story has close to fifty words, many of them that haven't been introduced yet in the book. This approach balances new words with familiar words, giving children confidence to keep reading. 

3. They keep classic stories alive

I love that new readers get to read real stories, even if they are familiar with them. It gives children a reason for reading, and gives them a feeling of accomplishment that they've read something real. And, it keeps classic, cultural stories alive. 

How to Use Treadwell Readers

If you follow Charlotte Mason's "reading by sight" approach, you can use it with these readers, too. Choose a few words that your child doesn't know from the text, and introduce them before reading. I like to take some of the words and write them in a Word Processing doc, to be able to move them around, as Charlotte Mason suggested. (It's nice that we don't have to chop up books anymore, like she did!) 

I recommend having your child read two or three pages a day to build endurance while reading. 

Check out My Little Robins'  reading lessons to use with Treadwell Readers. There are 9 weeks of lessons, with four lessons each week. A color-coded list tells you which words haven't been introduced yet, and each lesson introduces a few of the new words by sight. Two or three phonics lessons each week make sure your child has built a strong reading foundation. 

Charlotte Mason recommended that children keep a little journal of the words that they've learned. I like to organize this by phonics skill. This allows me to see if there are phonics skills that we need to review or that we've missed teaching altogether. My Little Robin's Treadwell Reading Lessons have phonics headings for your child to paste into a notebook to keep organized. 

You can find The Free & Treadwell Reading Literature series in the public domain or on Amazon. A free eBook version is also available from The Momma Knows. 

How to Help a Struggling Reader

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When you homeschool, having a struggling reader can be nerve-wracking. You know that you are the one in charge of getting your child to read fluently, but despite your best efforts, it just hasn't happened yet. Don't worry, it's going to be okay! I have some ideas for you.  In this post, I want to dig into some reasons why your child might be struggling to read, and what you can do to help. 

This is the fifth post in my Charlotte Mason reading series. You can start from the beginning using the button below. 

Reading Series


Why is Your Child Struggling to Read?

There is a bit of irony in a situation I've observed regarding struggling readers. In homeschool circles, dyslexia is often suggested as one of the first reasons a child might be struggling to read. This is ironic to me because when I was a public school teacher, throwing out the possibility of dyslexia was always one of the last resorts. Every possibility and remedy was exhausted before jumping to diagnose a learning disability. 

Knowing the problem is your first step to helping your struggling reader. As I mentioned in another post in this series, What Makes a Good Reader? a struggling reader is not the same as a disinterested one. For the purpose of this post, I am talking about readers who have trouble with decoding sounds, reading fluently, and understanding what they read. 

1. Development

It is very possible that your child is not ready to learn how to read. Child development has not changed its timeline to cater to the ever-increasing demands that are placed on children. I once had a student who came into first grade struggling with reading, and left flourishing. That year was just what she needed: she was finally ready to read.. 

It is possible that children older than first grade age aren't developmentally ready for reading. When I taught fourth grade in a public school, I was keenly aware of the "fourth grade slump." This is the term that refers to research around the likelihood that children won't catch-up to their peers if they are behind in fourth grade. The gap just widens.  Homeschool children don't have anyone to catch up to, but I think this research is helpful.


2. Phonics

If there are holes in your child's phonics instruction, then they will struggle to read. Charlotte Mason's reading by sight method doesn't rely solely on phonics, but it is an included and important part of it. Research says that leaving out phonics can deter a child's ability to read and spell. 

3. Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness, as I mentioned in my post about early literacy skills, is crucial for reading. Some children will pick these skills up naturally, and some children need direct instruction in them. If a child has had speech or hearing problems in the past, this is a sign that he or she might have phonemic awareness problems. 

4. Genetics

If struggling with reading is common for family members, then your child might be genetically predisposed for this. Dyslexia is a very real possibility, but it's worth exploring the other issues I've mentioned first. Here are the signs of dyslexia at different stages of childhood. 

How to Help Your Struggling Reader

If you were easily able to determine your child's struggle with reading, then you might not need to read any more! Some of the solutions are obvious. If your child is struggling with phonics, teach phonics! But, I do have some ideas and tips for you, no matter the struggle. 

1. Wait

One of the first things I did as a teacher if I had a struggling reader was to look at their age. A child younger than the other students in the class would just need a little more time. The unfortunate thing was that we just had to keep pushing through with reading lessons, knowing that the child wasn't developmentally ready to read. You don't have to keep going, though. Take a break. Start again during the next term or school year. 

2. Teach Phonics

Maybe you feel uncomfortable with phonics, or just haven't taught much of it yet. You got this! There are so many resources out there. Even with out a curriculum, you can find lists of every phonogram, and teach them through nursery rhymes or stories Charlotte Mason style. The key is to be systematic. Don't just teach random phonemes. Know which phonemes you have taught, and which ones you need to teach. 

My Little Robin's Reading Printable packs have just been updated to include more phonics, so you can teach in Charlotte Mason's way, without neglecting phonics instruction. 

3. Phonemic Awareness

Even a 15 year old who struggles with phonemic awareness will need direct instruction with it. So, if you've determined this is your problem, congrats! Teaching this set of skills is so easy and kind of fun! I wrote about this in my early literacy post, so I won't go into detail here, but the short answer is work on rhyming, blending, and segmenting through spoken games. 

4. Intervention

If you have a family member who struggled to read growing up, talk to them. Learn what worked for them and what didn't. If you have a family with dyslexia, then the likelihood that your child has it also is high. In most states, you can request to be tested through the school district. 

A child with dyslexia needs intense, systematic phonics instruction. An Orton-Gillingham approach, through a curriculum like Barton, is probably the best option for a child with dyslexia. (Note; I've never used Barton's program and this isn't an affiliate link, just a suggestion based off of my understanding of reading curricula!) 

5. Habits

I threw an extra reason in, one that doesn't line up with any of the reading problems I've mentioned. But, whenever someone shares a homeschool problem with me, my first reaction is to think about what habits might need to be developed to improve the situation. In the area of reading, could attention be preventing your child from learning? Or, maybe working on the habit of memory could help? Prayerfully consider what areas could improve in order to support learning. 





What Makes a Good Reader?

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Where are we heading when we embark on the journey of reading instruction? Do we have more in mind than just teaching our children to decode words? There are several factors that make up what one would consider to be a good reader, and I wanted to share them today from a Charlotte Mason perspective.


I've used affiliate links to share books that I love with you. Read more about affiliate links in my policies. 

This goal of becoming a "good reader" is multifaceted. We can reach one part of the goal early on and take months or even years to reach the rest. Slow progress is okay, even celebrated. 

This is the third post in the Charlotte Mason Reading series. Hop on back to the first post here, if you'd like! 

Reading Series


Fluency

Fluency is probably the first thing most of us think of when we hear the term "good reader." This is the ability to read words (decode) smoothly and quickly. 

Decoding is what we start to teach as soon as our children learn their ABC's. They are learning the symbols so that they can crack the code. A child who struggles to make sense of letters will not be able to decode words, and the struggle to decode words means that they'll have trouble comprehending them, too. Once decoding is secured, a child starts to read more smoothly and with less effort. This will allow the cognitive parts of reading to fall into place more easily.

My Little Robins Reading Printable Packs

Ability to Remember

In a Charlotte Mason home, we skip the comprehension questions and worksheets and instead use narration as a comprehension tool. We can assess what a child remembers by asking them to narrate after each reading. If a child can't tell back, there are several different possibilities as to why. Maybe they aren't paying attention, they didn't understand the book, or they are disinterested. Eventually, through repeating the act of narration, our children will learn to pay attention and be able to remember what they read. 

I highly recommend Karen Glass' book, Know And Tell, to help develop a better understanding of narration. 

Thinking About Thinking- Metacognition

I first learned about metacognition as a young language arts teacher in an intermediate school, before test scores became the leading lady in education. Metacognition is a fancy way of saying, "Thinking about thinking." This is important while reading because it allows us to monitor what we understand and don't understand while reading. It allows us to predict what might happen next, recognize that we haven't been paying attention, and make inferences that the author didn't state outright. What does metacognition look like in a Charlotte Mason home? 

Talking about books. After our children narrate, it's great to ask questions that get to the ideas behind what we read. We aren't asking surface level questions, but those that dig deep into what the child thinks about the book, like "What do you think this idea means? Do you think that this idea is right?" They are going to think more deeply about what they've read through questions like these. 

Interest

This is perhaps the most important and most misunderstood aspect of becoming a "good reader." People often confuse a struggling reader with a disinterested one. If a child does not enjoy reading, it may result in lagging reading skills. But, very often, a disinterested reader can read quite well, and just doesn't want to. On the other hand, a struggling reader might love to read, and just lack the skills (at the moment) to read productively. 

But, with more practice comes better reading skills, so whether a child is disinterested or struggling, the more time spent reading, the better. 

Charlotte Mason said that one of the most important habits that we can give to children throughout their education is the habit of reading. 

 

"The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading. Knowledge is conveyed to them by lessons and talk, but the studious habit of using books as a means of interest and delight is not acquired. This habit should be begun early; so soon as the child can read at all, he should read for himself, and to himself, history, legends, fairy tales, and other suitable matter. He should be trained from the first to think that one reading of any lesson is enough to enable him to narrate what he has read, and will thus get the habit of slow, careful reading, intelligent even when it is silent, because he reads with an eye to the full meaning of every clause."  Home Education, page 227

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So, maybe the habit of reading spurs an interest in reading, and that interest will carry the child through both their academic and non-academic reading through childhood, adolescence, and beyond. 

I've created a PDF for you full of Charlotte Mason reading pointers, and nursery rhyme cards so you can easily teach a reading lesson. Sign up below to have it sent to you ASAP! 


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Teaching Reading With Nursery Rhymes

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It might sound too good to be true- that nursery rhymes are the perfect tool for teaching reading skills at many stages of development. You can find them easily in classic books and all over the Internet for free, after all! But, I have used nursery rhymes to teach literacy skills since toddlerhood, and they truly make a great tool for pre-readers, alphabet learners, and those year one students beginning to read. 

This is the second post in my Charlotte Mason Reading series. In my last post, we dug into what I find to be the important principles behind Charlotte Mason reading by sight lessons. One principle is that the reading materials we give to our little learners should be living. (If you aren't familiar with the idea of living books, read this!) Nursery rhymes are just that: engaging and filled with interesting ideas. 

Reading Series


This post contains affiliate links for nursery rhyme books. You can read more about affiliate links in my policies. 


Nursery Rhymes for Phonemic Awareness

From infancy, we have read sweet little books full of nursery rhymes to our children. At this stage, we don't do much more than read the rhymes, but that simple act has a big effect. 

Phonemic awareness is one of the most important early literacy skills that a child can develop. This skill is basically the ability to hear and differentiate the sounds in words. Nursery rhymes help develop this skill thanks to the rhyming words. I found this PDF, produced by a school district, to be very helpful for understanding how beneficial nursery rhymes are for phonemic awareness development. 

Learning the Alphabet With Nursery Rhymes

Recently, I started teaching my curious second child his ABC's using The Mindful Alphabet, the preschool literacy lessons guide I created a few years ago. It uses Mother Goose's nursery rhymes to introduce the alphabet. Charlotte Mason said that learning the alphabet should be like one big game, and nursery rhymes allows it to be playful and fun. 

To introduce letters using nursery rhymes, read a rhyme, and then pull out one of the main words in it. If I were to read the rhyme "Hey, Diddle Diddle," I'd introduce the letter D for "diddle" and C for "cat." 

Nursery Rhymes for Reading Lessons

Charlotte Mason wrote about the first reading lessons in Home Education, pages 199-222. She taught "reading by sight" using whole words from nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes offer far richer reading material than the "Cat sat on the mat" books that many of us remember from growing up. She said that even the first reading lessons should offer meaningful, living words. 

Modern research shows that nursery rhymes "awaken responsiveness" in children, delighting them and engaging them (see PDF). 

Where to Find Nursery Rhymes

One of the best part of nursery rhymes is that many nursery rhyme books are in the public domain, so you can find them online for free. The Real Mother Goose is our favorite. When I went through the Mindful Alphabet with my daughter, she called this her reading book. If eBooks are not your favorite, you can find it here. I happen to see this book at thrift stores very often!

There is also The Big Book Of Nursery Rhymes by Walter Jerrold, that's available in the public domain. 

The website All Nursery Rhymes has an index filled with any nursery rhymes you could imagine. 

I've made some nursery rhyme cards for reading lessons, along with pointers for teaching a Charlotte Mason reading lesson. You can get them through the subscriber form below! 

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