“When two vowels go out walking, the first one does the talking”

Right.

Except, as Faith pointed out to me today, in “out” and “does”, both of which are in the stupid rule.

How astute.

I started a new Yahoo! group. Because that’s what the world needs: more committees!

Click to join Oklahoma Natural Parenting Homeschoolers

Sometimes it’s tricky to find the right spot. Maybe this will help some folks.

John Taylor Gatto, the education reform advocate who… “quit teaching on the Op Ed page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children” has released the entire contents of his book, The Underground History of American Education on his website.

If you don’t know what needs reforming about the American education machine you might just want to look that over.

h/t: ladyliberty8

My sister-in-law came over today with a gift for Faith - a Peter Rabbit book. She had spent quite a bit of time on the selection of the book because she wanted something that Faith would really enjoy. It was a perfect choice. Faith was very happy to get it and immediately plopped down and started reading it to her.

Faith’s reading has been completely learner-led. She is read to every day, we have provided a reading-rich environment for her, and we have answered all her spelling and ‘what does that say?’ questions. After a while it just gelled.

She’s been writing her own books for a few years too and learned to read and write as a sort of seamless whole. Just in the last few months her reading ability went from a halting stop/start/guess to fairly fluent on ‘grade level’ (actually about a 1st grade level.) I’m pleased that she’s doing this now but I wouldn’t be worried if she wasn’t, either. Some kids read later than Faith, some earlier - whether they are homeschooled or institutionally schooled.

She writes well-formed letters, choosing capital letters most often (like her daddy), and they are even and the same size. She prefers marker to pencil or crayon and likes to caption her own illustrations. It’s been especially interesting to see how her spelling has changed as she gets more and more fluent with written English.

So, anyway, thanks for the book Aunt Shari!

Here’s a reading assessment you can do, if that sort of thing interests you or your kid.

Edit: Faith’s favorite reading resources are Starfall, a free self-directed learn to read website, the Leap Frog Letter Factory and Talking Words Factory DVDs, and the television show/website Between The Lions.

Gil likes the park!

Abby on the slide, mid-bump

Bede, standing tall!

Samantha, our friend, zipping down the slide!

Zak, our friend, at the house

Faith at home

Gil likes the sofa!

Bede was pretty tired I guess.

I’m trying to get some park day interest again. Tomorrow me and Renee are headin’ to the park around noon. If you read this and are in the OKC area and want to meet a gang of eclectic homeschoolers, we’ll be at Corbin Park at 13th and Tulsa.

With any luck I’ll even take some pictures!

Due to some recent events in their lives, I am not (publicly) recording the educational journeys of my two teen scholars. When everything smooths back down I’ll blog about them - but until then mum’s the word.

Here are Faith and Abaigeal in the Halloween costumes. They’re fairies. (Not entirely unlike angels, really.)