Since my last post about Lucy reading, I calmed down, did a bit more research into Charlotte Mason's reading philosophy and found out that we're actually not doing anything she didn't think was suitable for a three year old. Which is good because I hadn't stopped, but at least now I feel better about not having stopped.
So to start with, I basically stretched out the letter learning part as long as possible because I knew blending was coming up next and I wasn't sure if she was ready for that. But then, she started doing it on her own so we moved to the first couple bob books and cvc words and she's doing awesome with them. But she doesn't like the bob books* and while I am using The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, I am tweaking it quite a bit. She doesn't do very well reading out of the book itself and its somehow both moving faster than I want it to while being too repetitive so I'm basically using it more as a guide to help me as I try and follow Charlotte Mason's principles, at least for now. But I wanted a fun way to practice cvc words in a game format so we could do one or two lessons a week with games on the days she asked for lessons past that. I'm hoping to keep us at "wordbuilding" stage for a while.
Enter Candy land, the world's most boring game. But it is easy and cheap and kids seem to like it. I won't take credit for the concept of making educational candyland cards because I've seen it several other places but none of those were exactly what I wanted. So I made my own and thought if I did the work I might as well share them with anyone else. Couple things:
1) These are for the 2010 gameboard. It comes with a spinner these days but just hide that part. I wish I had an older board because the new one is a bit of a visual overload but it was available at Target for $5 (on sale last week) and I didn't have to go searching thrift stores. The concept would work for any version of Candy Land but I'm not sure if they colors would match up. I printed them, laminated the sheets then cut them out.
2) I did not include peanut/ice cream/gumdrop type cards because that was going to be too hard and I always hated that aspect of the game anyway.
3) I added triples. The sounding out of the cvc words adds a considerable amount of time to the game so you'll thank me later :-)
4) It includes a lot of CVC words but not all. I stuck with the ones I thought Lucy would know. They are grouped by vowel so I could start with just the "a"s and add more cards as we practiced new vowels.
5) This game is probably not completely CM approved because it is a bit twaddley and takes words out of there context but too bad. It's fun.
Here you go. Hope you enjoy!
*Any guesses as to why? Obviously, they are too scary! You see, Mat sat on Sam and he looked sad. At that point she shut the book and refused to open it again. This kid. She is completely adorable and ridiculous all at the same time.
Great job, MacKenzie! We use the Ordinary Parent's Guide too, but definitely not as written. We just do the word lists and almost never read the sentences or stories that go with them. We make up our own or read, yes, Bob Books.
ReplyDeleteRight now our 6 yr old is still working through it. I have to remind myself that it is OK. She's learning at her own pace and, while that's a little slower than I would like, it will be fine in the end.