Well despite some of the kiddos getting sick - overall week 2 was a great success. I amazed at how well the students are doing - picking their own work, really working at it and having fun. Yesterday I introduced a basting activity where kids transfer colored water from one dish to another with a baster. One of the little guys really loved it - he kept showing his mom what he was doing and he was all smiles. Another student kept telling me how "cool" everything was. It is really hard for them to just watch me demonstrate - they really want to get involved and do it all. Which is the point.
So, I think I have sort of figured out the language stuff for now. I am also reading through Reading Reflex again. It is a similar approach to Montessori - without the sandpaper letters and with cards instead of a "moveable alphabet". Reading reflex basically teaches that letters represent the sounds we make with our speech. Both methods focus on the sounds that the letter makes- not the name of the letters. This makes so much sense - but somehow the A, B, C song seems so popular it's hard to overcome. So children get confused - the letter c - see; however, its sound is cuh. So when we ask them to spell or read they have to go through the process of naming and then sounding - if we just teach the sounds - they just sound it and don't worry about the names.
I have not tried Explode the Code - which also seems to be very popular. Has anyone tried it? I have looked at Teach your child to read in 100 lessons - but it was too visually confusing for me. I do admit that I didn't try very hard.
So, I think it will take all of Christmas break for me to figure out how to teach the math section - but that's okay.
2 comments:
The focus in kindergarten is to teach the letter sounds, the names will come. We thought it more important to know the sounds than the name. Meghan knows all the letter names and is now working on the sounds. At a very early age wanted to know the name, not the sound! She still won't let me do much with sounds, luckily she is learning them at school. Zoophonics is another way to teach sounds, it puts a large motor muscle movement with each sound so the memory is in the muscle too.
Enjoy all the exploring and if you get a chance read an article called "Messing about" by David Hawkins. I am not sure where to find it, I may still have a copy somewhere in my boxes.
PS What is the correct spelling of A's name?
The article is actually "Messing about with science." Do a Google search on the title by David Hawkins-the CU site has the whole article. Sorry I don't have the link.
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