I always like looking back over the school year during the last week of school. It amazes me what my kids have learned. I enjoy filling their final notebook with all the highlights of the year–their creative writing; calendar worksheets; math fluency and scripture memory sheets.
And, of course, my kids LOVE getting their awards!
I also like having them recount their “favorites.” The kids all have fun reading each others answers. I enjoy seeing what they consider to be their achievements. I also like getting a peak at the dreams (for their future and the summer) that they don’t always verbalize.
One of the cores I taught last year was Sonlight’s Core C. This was my third time through this particular core. And though I love Sonlight’s Language Arts (especially the read-alouds and read-alones), I don’t find the activity sheets too helpful. You can use them as recording sheets. But, what I needed was something to put in my son’s workbox. Something with directions (which are only found in the Instructor’s Guide) and inspiration…some independent seatwork. So, instead of searching the web for hands-on activities to add to his daily Language Arts assignments, I made printables that he could use to complete the Language Arts 2 activities. Not extra busy-work…but independent seatwork you can use with Sonlight.
Here is a peek of the independent seatwork for Week 1:
Day One: Compound Word Cards & Recording Sheet to help your child learn this week’s spelling words.
Day Two: Punctuation Rule Cards that your child will use to complete this week’s Copywork Application, Creative Expression, and Write a Sentence, or Two activities. You will want to store these on a loose-leaf ring (because we will add to them throughout the year) and have them handy each week. Sentence Scramble is a hands-on print & go sheet. Your child will cut out the color-coded word tiles at the bottom of the page, put then in and order that makes sense and then record the sentences.
Day Three: Descriptive Words is a student planning sheet with prompts to help your child prepare to write their descriptive paragraph on Day Four. You can give this to your child to fill in on their own; or use it when you meet with your child to help guide their creative writing preparations.
Day Four: Animal Description Recording Sheet has room for your child to record (or dictate to you, and you record) their paragraph and draw a picture of the animal they are describing.
Day Five: Write a Sentence, or Two is a weekly sentence writing challenge. This week’s challenge is to write sentences, using the spelling words presented on Day One, that begin with a capital letter and end with a period, question mark or exclamation point. Be sure to have this week’s Punctuation Rule Cards handy! I Spy Adjectives is a workbox-friendly I Spy activity. Your child will write down descriptive words (adjectives) for the things they see in the picture. Download a free copy of this sheet by clicking the link below (all the artwork is by Melonheadz):
As we enter the last month of our homeschool year, I find myself making mental notes about next year, and getting nostalgic about this one. Another school year is coming to a close. Yes, it is good to be nearing the finish line, but I want to capture where each of my kids is right now and bottle it up. What if I forget the joys from this year? And the struggles that motivated us to work harder and dig a little deeper? I want to be able to look back years from now and reminisce about our homeschool journey. So, this week I had my kids record this year’s favorites and look ahead to our summer break. Here is a look at what we used:
There is one for the boys and another for the girls. All of my children enjoyed filling in their favorites. My first grader needed a bit of help spelling a few things she wanted to write, but otherwise had fun on her own filling it in and coloring it! (The recording sheets in My Favorite Things are printer-friendly,black-and-white, and can be colored by your kids). There is also an autograph page, so you can record all your students’ signatures. Click on the picture below if you’d like to grab them to use with your kids.
If you use Sonlight for your homeschool, then you know all about the natural reading process. You read to your children, they read to you, and then they read to themselves. It works beautifully…for some children. My first two kids had no problems. I thought, “Hmmm…not sure what I did, but these kids can read!” Now, my third child didn’t fit this same mold. He read beautifully. At first. Then, as is fitting for our dynamic language, the sounds that worked for one word, simply didn’t work for another. He started just sounding out the first letter and guessing the rest. I did my best to help him for a couple of years. I figured he was a late bloomer. And then, last summer, I read Reading Reflex.
After spending this school year working through Read America’s Reading Reflex with my eight-year old, I’ve decided to be proactive with my younger children, and not simply wait and see if the natural reading process will work for them. And so, I’ve applied the Sound Mapping technique–saying the sounds as the word is read–and rhyming, another great technique for learning the sounds in words, to the CVCe and CCVCe word families that my first grader (in Core B, starting in Week 24) is learning.
Day One: 
