The Pinay Homeschooler

Learning From Books Using Narration Style Method

Saturday, August 2, 2014

We are currently doing Charlotte Mason narration style at home. We used to do Before Five In A Row (B4FIAR), where my son had a great time doing all the activities related to the book. The only problem is, they have a book list and most books in the list are out of print. With the narration style, we can use any book available and attack it the Charlotte Mason way :)

So without further ado, my first specimen is my son’s favourite book Where the Wild Things Are (Amazon US) (Book Depository)[aff. link]. We read it, pin pointed the words he couldn’t understand (for vocabulary lesson) and I took down notes as well for words worthy of spelling practice.

First activity is the Story Sequence using pictures. I scanned and printed pictures from the book and had Mavi arranged them. And then, I asked him to tell me the story (in his own word) using the pictures. I couldn’t believe he remembers 70% of the lines from the book!

Spelling and Vocabulary. Then we moved on to the spelling and vocabulary. By this time I ran out of ink so I just have to rely on my papers and sharpies LOL (I don't run out of ink these days and I always print in high quality thanks to our ECO Tank Printer from EPSON). For vocabulary, I have him read the definitions (practice reading) and then the meaning. He figured out that he needs to match them. The same with the spelling, decoding the scrambled letters to form the right words.

Story Sequencing using Words. We’re doing the sequencing using words only. This is to practice his reading analysis and skills.

Creating and Acting. After the oral narration, we printed graphics from Making Learning Fun and colored them so we could make them as puppets. This approach is similar to our Hickory Dickory Duck Unit.

And here they are! To assess, I made him retell the story (this was on a separate day) using the puppets and vocabulary words.

I was so happy that we did this!! I have never seen Mavi become interested in “home” schooling again (he’s on vacation mode LOL). He even told me “Mommy, can we do this again?”.

So yes! We are doing this every week. Now I am excited for our next book narration.

Books for Toddlers: Baby Picture Books

Thursday, July 31, 2014

NOTE: The post contains affiliate links.

My books from Book Depository finally arrived! So happy to have these picture books again :)

Baby’s First Colours

Baby’s First Words

Baby’s First Farm

Baby’s First Food

Baby’s First Animals

I looove these baby books, I have them when Mavi was 8 months old and I knew I just have to have them again for Vito. I couldn't find this in our local bookstore so I needed to purchase them from Book Depository as I no longer have Mavi's. In the picture below is Mavi. At that time the book is a year older already and the pages are torn due to excessive use :) There are 12 books in the series but I bought have 5 due to a limited budget LOL.

Now here are the reasons why I love and recommend this book series:

1. These board books are sturdy. I like its cover the most. It's wrapped with plasticky material, padded and soft, reason why my son loves to bite them :D If its wet with saliva the cover doesn't come off and tear.

2. The board pages are highly durable. They don't bend and my little boy can flip it easily.

3. It has large real pictures thus it holds my son’s interest. He can easily discern on it because of the pictures' size and simplicity. We love looking at them everyday.

4. The book uses bright colors as backgrounds. Vito is drawn to it especially those with red, yellow and blue backgrounds. There are 12 books in the series and I bought 5. These are tried and tested. I recommend them to babies as young as 4 months :)

These books would also be perfect as presents!

Books for Artists Study

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

I miss our Artist Study. Mavi enjoyed our Artist Study sessions. This was when there was no Vito yet and when my hands are not full :) Mavi is very much intrigued on the lives of some greatest artists, he loves to listen to their life stories and the paintings that they made. I have attempted this a million times, to reboot this lessons but the baby is a big factor. We’ll just have to set this aside and revisit this once Vito can join us.

Now I made this post to introduce two sets of books that Mavi and I really really love and enjoyed reading. I found these in our library… but of course they don’t have the complete set which I dream of owning someday. They are for keeps :)

The first set of the books are from James Mayhew. The books are all about Katie, who loves to visit museums with her grandma and when no one is watching, the paintings come alive. My son loves this idea of Katie going inside the painting and meeting the characters on it. We’ve read some of it and here are our favourites arranged according to how much we like them.

The second set of books that we also love are from Laurence Anholt. This time the stories are all about children meeting great artists. The books are more focused on the artist’s life rather than the paintings they’re made. Now these books are pretty popular in the library so they are seldom available. I plan to purchase them as gifts later on. As I said, these books are worth-it.

Books we’ve read from the series:

And there you go, my picks for studying great artists. Hope you checkout the books using my affiliates. Don’t worry, you won’t be charge or there’s no additional cost. I will just earn a teeny weeny commission if you order through my links (affiliates). And don’t hesitate to get your books from Book Depository because it is FREE DELIVERY NATIONWIDE.

Thank you and hope that this post helps.

FREE Spelling Worksheets for Letter Sounds ‘s,a,t’

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Hi! I am so happy to share these files with you! We’ve been working on them for the past three days and Mavi is loving them. As you all know, we’re having more math and spelling this summer and I try to customize the activity sheets according to the level of Mavi.

Here are the first three of the spelling worksheets I've created. The sequence of the letters is based on how my son’s school is teaching them, the phonic sounds.

Each file is contains:

word cards with pictures
word and picture match using cut and paste
rearranging letters to form the words (use the word cards here if needed)
writing of the words and using the picture as a guide
filling up the missing vowel –> Mavi’s always MISSING this out. He tends to ignore writing the vowels so I have to add this in the activity sheet.

As you can see below, he’s trying to use the Montessori movable letters to sort out the scrambled letters.