main goal for summer

My main goal for this summer is to get Noodle (age 7) reading up to grade level. I think between her OCD and being very right-brained, reading is just a lot of work for her. We recently went through most of the phonics lessons on http://www.thephonicspage.org and what I realized was that having OCD and being all about the rules, she probably really needs a thorough understanding of phonics in order to feel confident enough to read. I was never trained in phonics, and was an early reader as well as a great speller, so I didn't really understand the benefit of or role of phonics. Last night I made up a bunch of phonogram cards (hopefully I'll have some time to put the links up for those this weekend) and then today we reviewed the ones that I figured she knew well enough and worked through some others ("oy," "oi," "ou," "ew," "ui"). We did some spelling and some sentence reading, and one thing that she really liked is having her read a sentence and then illustrating it. We did a page of Explode the Code book 3 (which we haven't done since the beginning of May when we started those other phonics lessons) and then did some activities from the teacher's guide. She also really liked finishing sentence starts, and put special effort into making them funny. So I think those two things (illustrating sentences read and writing silly sentences) will have to be a part of our regular routine.

Gearing up for the year

I don't have any grand aspirations for this blog, really. Mostly I just want to be able to keep track of things for myself and report on various homeschool endeavors, and I doubt that the handful of people who follow my regular blog would care much about these details. And I've started other blogs that kind of died before they had much momentum, which obviously is no real skin off my nose. But, here it is, and if it works, then great!