Tools — Home School Support Network

Sherry Osborne August 13, 2012

Cursive First Handwriting Samples

This is a follow up to our podcast episode on Cursive First. I am going to lay out, in a series of pictures, a rough outline of the process that I used to teach cursive writing and phonics to my five year old son. You will see writing samples for a one and a half year time frame.

The reading program that I incorporated the Cursive First into is called STEPS (Sequential Teaching of Explicit Phonics and Spelling). Handwriting is included in STEPS but it was easy for me to take out that part of the program to use the Cursive First. I did switch to STEPS handwriting paper that does not have “skip lines” as soon as we were done with writing the numerals. Some children have a hard time transitioning to regular lined paper so I went ahead and taught that early on.

Cursive First fits more neatly with the SWR (Spell to Write and Read) curriculum. The author of Cursive First, Elizabeth FitzGerald, is a trainer for the SWR program. This program is easily obtainable, in fact I got my copy off Amazon. I do like that SWR has a Biblical base whereas STEPS was created for public school use. Perhaps I will do a more thorough curriculum review of both in the future….

I give you a brief description of these two reading methods to acknowledge that the writing samples of my son’s will look a little different than both these methods because I blended the two together. Beyond the writing, I find both the SWR & STEPS to be very similar in their method, phonograms, and spelling rules. STEPS just happened to be the curriculum I already had from my previous teaching days.

*Disclaimer: My son is not “gifted” in reading and writing. In fact, he really dislikes writing to this day & would much prefer to do math! He does love to read, and has consistently read above grade level, but I attribute that more to an effective reading method rather than “giftedness.”*

I started with teaching the appropriate “tripod” pencil grip, sitting posture, and writing position. I taught the clock face reference tool (or the handwriting circle reference tool used by STEPS). Then I used a variety of tactile and kinesthetic activities such using a salt box as shown below.

Salt Box for Cursive Teaching — The *Cursive First* book provides instructions for creating a salt box.

Salt Box showing lower case letter A — This is an example of a cursive letter “a” written in the salt box.

Cursive Work of a 5 year old — This is some of Riley’s very first pencil and paper work back on 6/6/2008. I used stickers to highlight for him his best work. (Age 5 yrs. 7mos.)

Number practice — I continued by teaching numbers with tactile then pencil & paper practice. This is a review practice sheet Riley did once I completed teaching all the numbers. We spent one week learning numbers.

Teaching Cursive Strokes — We worked on cursive strokes using the salt box (shown above) and sidewalk chalk before moving to pencil and paper.

Teaching Cursive Strokes with Phonics — It is important that the child know the names of the strokes. (i.e. “up and over”) and positional terms (i.e. “base line”) to be able to progress to writing the phonograms. Learning positional terms is a great school readiness activity.

Cursive First Phonogram Quiz — I began introducing the phonograms at a rate of 4 per day. Every day started with a “quiz” of all the previously learned phonograms (and in the beginning, the cursive strokes too). *STEPS* and *Cursive First* recommend the order in which to teach the phonograms based on the strokes that are used. As you can tell, some of his letters are shaky but coming along.

Spelling Test with Cursive First after 1 year of kindergarten — This is a spelling test sample at the end of kindergaten almost exactly one year after initial instruction began. Riley was 6 yrs 7mos at the time. The phonograms shown in the lower right corner had progressed to more complex multiletter ones.

1st Grade Handwriting After 1.5 years of Cursive Teaching — This is a sample of Riley’s work half way through his 1st grade year. He had been receiving instruction since the beginning of kindergarten.

Sherry Osborne June 22, 2012

Laundry Sorting Chore

Chores. We all dislike them at one point or the other. We all have to do them!

In our family, chores are a requirement. They are a way of investing into the family. They are also an area of character training by way of teaching personal responsibility. We do not pay for our children to make their beds, help with laundry, unload the dish washer, or wipe/vaccume around the table after meals. If they want to earn money, we offer extra chores (perhaps a job that I would like done or would pay someone else to do anyway). Some of these paid jobs might be cleaning the inside &/or outside of the cars, washing blinds, or dusting baseboards.

The biggest chore, especially with 4 growing boys, is LAUNDRY! I started traing my oldest in how to do laundry when he was 2 1/2 years old. I let him “help” me and over time he could do more and more on his own (yes, this “help” does slow you down at first but it teaches too). Doing chores teach responsibility and serving as well as sorting, stacking, and all kinds of motor skills.

As each child gets bigger in our family, the chores get passed to a younger sibling- and they get a new chore. See What Every Child Should Know Along the Way for a list of age appropriate chores by year from 3-18 years old. My 9 year old has been trying to teach my 4 year old how to sort the dirty laundry into colored piles…and the learning process has been going slowly. There’s just SO many colors! Then I had an idea- a sort of “cheat sheet” to help Josiah with the laundry!

I created a sheet with color samples to illustrate what piles the items belong. While the color list is not exhaustive, it has helped a great deal for my visual learner to be able to sort most of the laundry by himself. I still get an occasional “Where does this go Mom?” but the frequency has been much less. I’m just wondering why I didn’t create this guide sooner!

Download a copy of the Color Sorting Cheat Sheet.

Hank Osborne May 11, 2012

LESSON PLANS

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Podcast Episode 16 show notes.

This week we had a few homeschooling families over for dinner and the topic of school planning came up. As I shared how my method has changed over the years, my husband noticed the nodding heads (of mostly the husbands!) How is it that us wives stress out so much over lesson plans?! I have a couple of theories and some possible solutions.

Theory 1
Temperaments! I know that I go back to this frequently but it is integral to understanding how God wired us up AND to understanding our strengths/weaknesses. If you will recall from episode 10, the Choleric & Meloncholoy temperaments are the task focused temperaments and they like to have a PLAN! Melanchologies are also perfectionists and love their Sticky Note “to do” list. I believe it is a natural tendency to be stressed when life (AKA school planning) is unplanned. Yes, God does work on our weaknesses but it is a process!

Theory 2
I think our goals/purpose for homeschooling causes (or at least contributes to) the stress we experience in the area of school planning. This goes back to our discussion in episode 2. When our purpose in homeschooling is academic greatness rather than training their hearts and character in the ways of the Lord, then a natural side effect is pressure- sometimes extreme pressure- to find THE BEST curriculum, plan out GREAT lesson plans, and implement those plans! A good antibiotic for this is realizing that NO MATTER how hard you try, you WILL have gaps in your child’s education because it is not possible to teach your child every academic knowledge and skill there is. Despite the effort of “trained educators”, the same is true for them too- I’ve also been in that camp! But what you can teach them is how to love the Lord, obey HIM and exhibit Godly character…knowing that these things will follow them well in life and any laking skills or knowledge can be quickly obtained. Employers can’t train character but they can train skills.

THE “SCHOOL” METHOD
My college training ingrained in me a method of creating lesson plans where it was written out what would be accomplished everyday in each subject and the learning objectives/state standard for each lesson. These plans were kept in a book on my desk where the school administrators could view them at any point in our day. In addition to the weekly plans, I also had a “long range plan” of the skills I had to teach and how that was going to fit for the year.
There is nothing wrong with this type of planning in your homeschool, if it works for you. This is how I started in my homeschooling until I started spending more time revising it than I did implementing it or creating it in the first place! You can look at an example of those plans on the shownotes. This method of planning will be more difficult if you have a lot of context situations (as discussed in episode 11). Another difficulty to this level of detail and planning in advance is that it works for the Choleric & Melancholy (task oriented) temperaments but not so well for the people oriented.

The Lord revealed another method that has been working well for me. I like to call it a “Completed Work record”.

COMPLETED WORK RECORD – for daily plans
I started writing down everything we did in a school day AFTER it was completed. I have found that my life is much easier when I am electronically connected so I started using Google Docs to keep a record of daily work completed for each child. I will print these records out at the end of the year to include in their school work portfolios.

Benefits:
It has reduced the amount of frustration and time I spend revising daily written lesson plans–tremendously! I can edit the electronic record any where (and any time I have a few minutes). Plus I can cut and paste…a nice feature to have!
The best benefit has been the relief of stress to “keep up with my plans”. (Again, this is coming from a task-oriented temperament as opposed to a people-oriented person who actually does need more structure.) Using this method, I have been better able to put a halt on school to deal with attitudes of the heart which need training- which is my primary focus for home educating my children. I don’t get so frustrated and overwhelmed at seeing my week of beautiful lesson plans crossed out or with arrows marked all over simply because I had to deal with outright defiance, temper tantrums, or lack of personal responsibility!

PLANNING FOR THE WEEK OR MONTH
History and science are the easiest for me to plan because they naturally lend themselves to units or sections. These smaller chunks can be broken down into a weekly flow of activities. To give myself flexibility, I write down the order of activities to complete a unit and sometimes I break it down to “Day 1”, etc. If I don’t complete all the activities for that day, or I over plan, then it is at the top of the list to do on the next day. It can be likened to creating a sequence. I try to plan a unit at a time but sometimes life gets in the way and I end up planning a week. I do try to know where I am heading in the curriculum. Math gets done one lesson at a time and is little planning though that varies by curriculum. I tend to use history and science books for me to read aloud or for my child to read to me/brothers. I do a phonics/spelling/handwriting program, called STEPS, that is already broken into lesson and activity and easy to plug in wherever I need. Piano is practiced daily with a lesson once per week. “Daily GRAMS”(English/editing) and Bible are done almost daily. Other subjects like art, writing, PE, Geography, Latin, Bible/Character Club are done at our co-op once a week with the homework being done at home (but NOT ALL of these subjects are done every year!)

WHAT I AM NOT SAYING
I am not saying you should not plan at all. To think that you can embark on such a huge task of home educating your children without any plan at all is hugely nieve and risky! I am not saying you should be lazy in your planning or not teach your children valuable skills. They must learn the basics like reading, writing, and math. But does that mean your child is doomed academically if he/she doesn’t know all his vocabulary, know where Tanzania is in his/her head, or doesn’t remember all the facts of the Golden Age of Greece? No. Be wise, be purposeful, but also flexible.

What a relief to trust in my Lord and Savior to equip these children in skills they need to fulfil His purposes.

Links mentioned in this episode: Donna Young’s Lesson Plans

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