more reading babble

We've now covered all of the sounds in the First Grade phonics kit, so I'm just spending some review time and finishing the stories. Sweet Pea is getting much more fluid in her reading.
I think that we're going to spend some time finishing the McGuffey's Primer before moving on to the second grade kit. We've been letting it slide a little and this will be a great opportunity to catch up.
For handwriting we've begun Memoria Press's cursive copybook. I'd originally intended to use it this fall but then I sat down and actually LOOKED at how much I had for the fall for Language Arts- and realized it was too much. Way, way too much. I have First Language Lessons, Writing With Ease, and Spelling Workout. All of those require handwriting in varying amounts, as does history.
So since we've finished Cursive First we'll chug through this for the rest of the summer.

I know it sounds silly

But I'm itching to get to this fall. I want to start- to dive in and enjoy all of the great and fun stuff that I have planned. This feeling is especially strong on gloomy, rainy days like this.
I know waiting is better and that I'll be happy this fall that we stuck to the schedule- and I know that good things are happening this summer. Sweet Pea is nearing the end of another level of phonics and can now write all the lower case letters in cursive. She's closer to easily counting to 100. I feel like it's all prep work - good prep work, but still more prep then actual schooling.
Almost everything is ready in binders and arranged. I do need another cabinet to hold everything as we keep expanding. But otherwise? I think we're good to go.
Fall, hurry up!

3 ending sounds left and Sweet Pea will have finished her Hooked on Phonics 1st grade! We just need to go over -ed, -es, and -ly. Yay! According to the Sonlight Quick Reading Assessment she's at a 2nd grade level, so I'm pretty pleased.

Mostly artwork

This is a dragon with the four of us- mommy and daddy at the bottom, Little Bird flying through the air, and Sweet Pea on the dragon.

This is possibly the coolest fish I've ever seen.

Charlotte from Charlotte's Web. She's spinning a web in case it's unclear. We're reading the book outloud together.

It says, "The dragon saw the princess." I'm so pleased that cursive is going well.

I'm so excited- we only have 15 more ending sounds to work through to finish the 1st grade Hook on Phonics level! I'm letting Sweet Pea have a McGuffey bread while we finish this level. Once we get through it I'd like to do 30 pages or so of the Primer before beginning the 2nd grade level.
I've started researching our next move after that and there are a few directions that we could go in. I'm not sure where we'll go- some of that depends on Sweet Pea's comfort level after we finish what we have.
We could get the Hooked on Phonics Master Reader- but I honestly don't know if I'd like this as much as I do the other levels. My understanding of it is that it's computer based and I don't want to use any computer games for her at this age.
We could do one of the upper levels of Explode the Code- but I don't know offhand what level or if that would be really beneficial or not.
We could just use the McGuffey's readers. I know that my husband and his budget would like this one. ;)
There's Abeka and McRuffy and an almost infinite number of other programs. I need to start narrowing it down, obsessively researching, and then planning.
That's my speciality.

More exuberant praise for Hooked on Phonics to follow. ;)
Sweet Pea is now reading the included chapter books! She's on her third. The title is Picnic at Black Rock and it comes in at 64 pages and 6 chapters.
She already knows all the sight words for the K level and both parts of the 1st grade level, so once she's through the workbook and the included stories we'll be all set to begin 2nd grade phonics!
We've moved through short CVC words to consonant combination beginning and ending words. Next up is vowel combinations. We'll be through the simple digraphs then!
Where we head after that I don't know. But I'm excited to see. It's amazing to me that less then six months ago Sweet Pea couldn't sound out "cat" and now she's reading books. :)

Our dining room looks more and more like a school room, and less and less like the formal dining room I'd like.

The posters are cool, though. :)