Let the Schooling Begin...

I have mentioned before that we are planning to homeschool Ada, and our journey officially begins in August when she will be a part of Classical Conversations--a classical homeschool group. 

I am so excited about this!!!  I think that we desperately need a homeschool group if we are going to "do this thing."  I need the accountability, and I think it will be fun for Ada to have an official "first day of school" and classmates and all of that.  You can read more about Classical Conversations here, but basically, we will meet one day a week at a local church, where the classroom tutor will introduce the week's material and review (?) the previous week's material.  I am not sure about the reviewing part.  But, anyway, for this super UNorganized mama, the actual reporting to someone once a week is a huge help.

I was going to go into all the reasons why we are homeschooling, but I decided I just won't.  Bottom line, it's what we feel like God is calling us to do, and as for the education itself, I absolutely, 100% believe in the classical model, so that's the why behind that choice.  If anyone wants to know more I would be glad to share, but that would take so long right now, and really I just want to blog about Ada's BIG accomplishment. 

Today...Ada read a book!!!!

We have been working our way through Phonics Pathways for a while now, but we haven't been able to move past the vowel sounds, which is driving me a bit crazy.  I don't know if it's a developmental thing, and maybe it will come with age, but Ada can't get all the vowel sounds right.  She knows the A sound without question, and she also does O fairly automatically, but the others trip her up a bit.  Well, yesterday, my BOB books (LOVE them) arrived in the mail, and I decided to just go for it with book 1--she only had to know four sounds to read it, and only the A vowel sound, so we tried it yesterday.  She read one word yesterday, and I was so excited, but she burned out pretty quickly. 

Well, we tried it again today, and today, I made her work through the whole book, and SHE DID IT.  If you can't tell, I am pretty fired up about this.  It's just so amazing to watch her sound out the letters and realize it's a word and then read this (SUPER simple) story all by herself. 

I should add, that after reading two pages, she decided she wanted to be done.  When I told her, "no mam, we have to finish the book," this was her reaction

So, it quickly turned into a discipline issue, but we eventually made it through the book. 

I am also slowly introducing some sight words--we are starting with just three--and she is doing fairly well with those.  She can recognize them on the notecard, but she doesn't seem to recognize them in the context of an actual book.  We just started the sight words today, though, so I assume that will come with time. 

So, here we go...we are official homeschoolers.  Yes, I know, mark us down as a weird homeschool family--we can handle the label ;)

Our other school related item of the summer is that I signed Ada up for the reading program at the library.  Now, when I was doing summer reading programs, I think that I got a free pan pizza from Pizza Hut at the end--am I right, mom? other "Book-it" alumni?  So, I pictured it being this big deal at the end of the summer where Ada got to go get her free pizza because we read so many books, etc. etc.  I think all she gets is a certificate.  But, we're doing it anyway, and it has made both of us remember to read books more.  She gets excited to write it down on her list, and, let's be honest, nerdy me also gets excited to write the books down on her list.

And when we're not doing all this "educating," (which takes up like 30 minutes of our day--at the most), Ada and John are busy making silly sounds into the box fan in the kitchen.  Classic summer entertainment.  Ann, don't you remember sitting in our bedroom in the house on Birchwood, making noises into the box fan?  John may not be able to say many understandable words, but he can make silly sounds and crack himself up with the best of them.