“Trains, Moms, Heat and Such” Week 27 First Grade

The Train Ride Story (Fiction, Level 2) by Joy Cowley

My New Mom (Fiction, Level 2) by Steve Pattrick

Heat (Non-fiction, Level 2) by Margie Burton

Choose the Operation (Non-fiction, Level 2) by Katy Pike

 

 

This week it really hit me that my first grader is getting very close to becoming a second grader! The books are getting longer, and my first grader is reading better than he ever has before – it’s like watching a magic trick that seems too good to be true but you know it absolutely is. This week we read about a little girl who writes her own story, someone who enjoys having two sets of parents, how heat works, and how to choose whether to add or subtract when trying to solve a word problem in math. What a week!

The activity I want to highlight this week is Step 2. Word Recognition and Phonics Development. This step was difficult when we started this school year, mainly because it took a little more focus and attention than my active 6 year old could muster, but now that he is 7 and has plenty of attention to give, this step is one of the most informative and fun. We use the letter tiles that come with the kit every week to make the words on the list, and we talk about the concepts using these letter tiles. I find this really helps Malachi retain the information, and it’s an amazing hands-on approach to teaching spelling. For instance, this week just for the book Heat we learned the following words in Step 2: heat, beat, meat, neat, seat, treat, cheat, cold, most, toast, snowman, show, and low; and we also learned how to put words in alphabetical order by first or second letter and how to use a comma before the word but in a sentence. And each book in the kit comes with a similar list with a different word family/phonics item and punctuation/grammar skill, as well as the other steps.

For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.