No Longer a Reluctant Reader

This week Ramona turns ten years old.   Tonight I was updating the files I keep on what the girls read to make sure her nine year old list was up to date before starting a new file for her.    I was very happy to see how much she read this last year.   I've always had issues getting her to voluntarily sit down to read for pleasure.   She has always preferred to be read aloud to and if no one is able to do that, she loves audio books.    

We have always fed her love of being read aloud to and hoped that eventually we would spark a love of reading on her own in her.    Something in the last year has definitely clicked.   She is not afraid of any book, of any size.     I often need to tell her when to turn her light off at night and she always takes a book voluntarily with her wherever she goes.    

Her sister is a big fantasy and dystopian reader.   Ramona enjoys a little bit of fantasy, but much prefers stories about girls her age and historical fiction.   When she hits upon a series about girls her age that is also historical fiction we have a hard time getting her to put the book down.   I will continue to do everything I can to feed her books that she will love and expose her to different genres and authors by reading aloud to her.    

I am a firm believer that reading aloud, exposing kids to both good and fun literature and making reading a priority by limiting screen time will make any child an avid reader.

Below is a list of the books she read herself at age 9.   Further down is the books we read aloud to her.    I love that the the books she has read far outweigh the read alouds.   Note: I did not include any non fiction school books she read.

Books read by Ramona age 9:

Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink

Flying High

The Magic Spell

A Special Friend

Stonger than Magic

A Winter Wish  by Linda Chapman

Mitch and Amy

Ramona Forever

Ramona's World by Beverly Cleary

A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons

How to Be a Pirate

How to Break a Dragon's Heart

How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

How to Speak Dragonese

How to Train Your Dragon

How to Ride a Dragon's Storm

How to Twist a Dragon's Tale by Cressida Cowell

Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig by Kate Dicamillo

Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Harriet the Spy 

Harriet Spies Again by Louise Fitzhugh

The Ugly Princess and the Wise Fool by Margaret Grey

Elisa in the Middle by Johanna Hurwitz

New Dawn on Rocky Ridge 

On the Banks of the Bayou

On the Other Side of the Hill

In the Land of the Big Red Apple

Little Farm in the Ozarks

Little House on Rocky Ridge

Bachelor Girl

Little Town in the Ozarks by Roger Lea MacBride

White Fang by Jack London

Anna the Moonbeam Fairy

Ava the Sunset Fairy

Cara the Camp Fairy

Cherry the Cake Fairy

Courtney the Clownfish Fairy

Grace the Glitter Fairy

Honey the Candy Fairy

Jasmine the Present Fairy

Lexi the Firefly Fairy

Melodie the Music Fairy

Morgan the Midnight Fairy

Nia the Night Owl Fairy

Amelia the Seal Fairy

Phoebe the Fashion Fairy

Pia the Penguin Fairy

Polly the Party Fun Fairy

Sabrina the Sweet Dreams Fairy

Whitney the Whale Fairy

Zara the Starlight Fairy by Daisy Meadows

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Howard Pyle

Meet Kirsten

Kirsten Learns a Lesson

Happy Birthday, Kirsten!

Kirsten's Surprise

Meet Josefina

Josefina Learns a Lesson

Happy Birthday, Josefina!

Josefina's Surprise

Josefina Saves the Day

Changes for Josefina by Janet Beeler Shaw

Snowbound Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Shadow Magic

Feline Charms by Kitty Wells

Little House in the Big Woods

Little House on the Prairie

Farmer Boy

On the Banks of Plum Creek

By the Shores of Silver Lake

The Long Winter

Little Town on the Prairie

These Happy Golden Years

The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Little Clearing in the Woods

Little Town at the Crossroads

On Top of Concord Hill

Little House in Brookfield

Across the Rolling River

Little City by the Lake

A Little House of Their Own by Celia Wilkins

Read-Alouds heard by Ramona age 9:

The Witches

The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo

The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster 

Slim's Goodbye by John R. Erickson

The Moffats by Eleanor Estes

Blue Willow by Doris Gates

King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry

Island of the Aunts

Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson

The Akhenaten Adventure

The Blue Djinn of Babylon by P.B. Kerr

Big Red by Jim Kjelgaard

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

By Fire, By Moonlight

Night of the Shifter's Moon

The Road to Balinor

The Secrets of the Sceptor

Shadows Over Balinor

Sunchaser's Quest

Search for the Star

Valley of Fear by Mary Stanton

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

The Christmas Dolls by Carol Beach York

 

 

 

Weeks 18, 19 & 20

We've been plugging away at school and are halfway through our 21st week.    Hermoine finished up her Lego League season with a first place win in the project category.  Her team did a really great job.   They scored lower than they wanted on the robot portion, but were very happy to have won the project trophy.   This is an activity she is definitely going to continue with next year.   

Both girls are continuing with Liberty Girls.   They've moved on to Kirsten, which makes Ramona very happy.  She loves the pioneer time period.    They had their first meeting for Kirsten this week.   

We have started going to a twice-a-month homeschool swim club.   The girls have been twice now and just love it.    There are about 40 kids there each time and they both have good friends that attend.   We are also still attending Nature Center classes, book club and are heavily involved in scouting.

As far as school goes I'll give a brief overview for the last few weeks.

Hermoine has been working on peremiter, area and radius of circles and half circles in math.   She has been finding Grammar very easy, has worked her way through her Latin, Geography, Writing, Spelling, Logic and Music.    She is currently reading Gone Away Lake for literature.

She has been working on ancient jewelery design and ancient architecture in Art.   For Science she has started on complicated food chains.   I'm surprised at how much depth it goes into for her age.   We're just loving K12!

Ramona has been working on adding and subtracting decimals in math.      She has worked her way through her Handwriting, Geography, Grammar, Logic, Spelling, Writing and Spanish.   She has been working on typing and has increased her skill and speed.   She just finished an abridged version of White Fang and is now reading Harriet Spies Again for literature.

She has been working on cubism in Art and has now moved on to architecture.   Her Science has been about invertebrates for the last three weeks.

Ramona also took a second reading test through her K12 teacher and she has improved to a 6.6 reading level.   She is reading more than two grade levels above her age.    

Both girls have worked on their History together.   Last week was about Queen Isabella of Spain, the week before was all about Joan of Arc.

Weekly Update 15 -17

We have been doing school, I've just been really bad at keeping up this month.   December for us, like for so many others, is so busy.   On top of that we've had 10 day long colds with coughs that are still hanging around.  We haven't missed a day of school, though and tomorrow we finish up our 17th week of the school year.     I can't really go back and cover everything we did the last few weeks, but I will start back with detailed updates in January.   Happy holidays!

Christmas Books

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is reading Christmas books together.    I wrap the books and place them in a basket.   Starting on the first of December the girls take turns opening them each night before bed.  We then snuggle in and read the books.   They have a game where they try to find The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and The Twelve Days of Christmas.    Much celebrating ensues when one of those books are opened.    

Some of our other favorites are:

• The Story of Holly and Ivy
• Twas the Night Before Christmas
• Christmas Day in the Morning
• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
• The Legend of the Poinsetta
• The Nutcracker 

I love Christmas traditions.   What are some of yours?

~Quick Week 14~

It took is a couple of days to get back into doing school after taking a week off.    We had a good week, although there was some fussing about math and writing.  The girls worked through all of their schoolwork.  

The highlights were:

Ramona working on the nervous system in science.   She is absolutely loving this unit.

Hermoine finding a niche in her Music curriculum.   She enjoys learning about music from other cultures.

Ramona started memorizing the poem "Learning to Read" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, one of my favorite poems from the First Language Lessons series.

Hermoine designing and building an add on for the robot in her Lego League challenge.   She worked really hard on it.

Both girls also had their monthly Nature Center class.  

I'll post a more detailed update next week.  

~Week 13~

We just finished our 13th week of the school year and our last day of school for the next ten days.   The girls and I were getting a bit burned out so I decided to take all of next week off for the holiday.    We'll do some crafts, some reading, and enjoy some lazy time.   We're supposed to get a storm tonight and we're hoping the snow sticks enough that we can do some sledding as well.

Back to the weekly report, though.   Hermoine finished Singapore Math 6A by doing reviews all week.   When we start back up with school she'll be moving on to 6B.   She finished her work in Grammar, Geography, Writing and Spelling.  She did three lessons of Rosetta Stone Latin and two of Getting Started in Latin.  She did three pages of Logic, one in Mind Benders and two in Dr. Dooriddles.   She is nearly finished with Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry for Literature.    In Art she worked on a self portrait.  

She studied the digestion system and took a unit review in Science.    For Music she covered Schubert.

Ramona has been working on finding the perimeter and area in five and six sided polygons for math.  She did all her Geography, Writing, Spelling and Grammar.   She did two lessons of Rosetta Stone Spanish.   She did three pages of Logic.   She has been practicing typing by playing games at freetypinggame.net three times a week.   She has been working on Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder for Literature.   In Art she studied Van Gogh and is really enamored of his story and art.

She spent both days of Science doing a review and Unit Assessment on density, buoyancy, lift, drag, etc. 

For History both girls learned about China in the Middle Ages.  

~Week 11 & Week 12~

I didn't get around to posting last week so I'm doing one post for weeks 11 and 12.   The girls have done all of their school work, including an optional unit Ramona chose to do in K12 Science.    I'm just going to cover the highlights of the last two weeks, though.

Hermoine is working on distances, percentages and fraction word problems in math.     She also finished The Giver and Abigail Adams, Girl of Colonial Days for her literature selections.   She is now reading Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry.   In Science she worked on the circulatory and respiratory systems in the human body.  

Ramona has been working on angles in math.   She finished The First Four Years and moved onto Farmer Boy for literature.   In Science she has been learning about air pressure, density, buoyancy, etc.    In Art she is studying the Impressionists.   Degas, Monet, etc.  So far this is her favorite unit in Art.

Both girls covered the Magna Carta, the legend of Robin Hood and the Diaspora in history. 

~Week 10~

We had a busy week once again.    The girls had five different Girl Scout meetings/activities between them as well as attending the Library Homeschool Hour and their Nature Center Class.   We're looking forward to a lazy weekend.  

Hermoine has been working on reviews all week in math.    She's having a very easy time with math so far this year, which is nice because when we battle it is always over math.

She worked her way through Spelling, Grammar and Writing.   Her Writing was focusing on Venn Diagrams and how to use them in a persuasive paragraph.   She thinks Venn's are cool, so she had fun with this weeks lessons.    She is reading The Giver by Lois Lowry for Literature.

In Art she finished up her ancient seals and cartouches artwork and moved on to the significance of solar discs in ancient art.   I can't express how much she loves this art curriculum.

For Music she learned about traditional Caribbean music.   In Science she is working on cell division and osmosis.    She also did three lessons of Rosetta Stone Latin and two from Getting Started With Latin.   She worked on memorizing all the seas in Geography.  She is supposed to be working on the continents as well, but she knows them already.

Ramona also had reviews for four of the five days of math this week. The fifth day was working on bar graphs.

She did all of her Spelling, Writing and Handwriting.  In Grammar she is working on learning the complete subject vs the simple subject and the complete predicate vs the simple predicate.   She finished memorizing "Ozymandias" and has moved on to "How Doth..." by Lewis Carroll.    For Literature she is reading The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In Art she learned about optical illusions.   For Music she had a Unit Review and Assesment.   In Science she is learning about the way organisms interact.   She finished the BBC Typing program and is now working on speed by typing daily.   She did two lessons of Rosetta Stone Spanish and is working on memorizing the oceans and their spellings in Geography.

Both girls learned about the Crusades in History.