100 easy lessons...

This week has been a bit hectic (harhar!) what with a stray who appears to be named Jake (as per Sophia's insistence) who needs serious medical care has chosen us for a family. We started "Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons" by Siegfried Engelman, and so far it appears to be a nice short structured lesson that S loves. I think that the writing exercises at the end of each lesson are not particularly helpful, but if your child is just starting letters they may not be a bad thing. In our case I find they confuse S because she is already using all capitals and is very proficient at writing them, so the lower case "sounds" are new. Another issue is that S knows the letters by their names and this book has us using only "sounds" which so far is ok, but I can see how it could be better if one introduces letters/sounds as such from the beginning. I am not sure how one would do this though, perhaps if you successfully avoid television?

We are still enjoying playing with pattern blocks, but there are some new games I want to try with cuisenaire rods and we are waiting on a back order from "ETACuisenaire". I am far from pleased with this company right now, they failed to state that there were items in my cart that were back ordered, and then without permission sent a partial order and will charge me more later to send the rest of it. I will be calling them soon to explain that if I had know about this I wouldn't have ordered from them at all and would instead have gotten the items from other sources. We could have had our blocks and cuisenaire rods already if I had just bid on that vintage set on ebay!

Speaking of cuisenaire rods, my mom has started a blog about math games and activities for little kids which I have found helpful in jogging my memory (of my own homeschooling), and I think she is putting new ideas on there as well. You can read it here: http://drellmath.blogspot.com/

Edit to add: ETACuisenaire has redeemed themselves more or less, turns out they just packaged up everything separately and things are arriving in drips and drabs. Not wonderful, and very unclear/badly communicated "bills" that keep arriving, but the products appear to be arriving in a timely manner over the course of a few days.  I am happy to not have to fight with a billing dept or wait 3 months for blocks or something.