“Hey Mom and Dad, I just figured something out. . . If you have 4 hours and put it into 3 groups, you’d have one hour and twenty minutes in each group!”

You know, I had been feeling a wee bit guilty that Kat never finished her 1st grade math workbook this year. I guess she’s doing all right.

It is true that some children can learn to read remarkably early. But the fact that they can does not necessarily mean they should. Should is another question. One school district set up an experiment to help decide this question. Some kindergartners in the district received time learning science. They melted ice. They observed thermometers in hot and cold places. They played with magnets, grew plants, learned about animal life, and so on. Books and pictures were available for these children if they wanted them, but no formal lessons in reading were held.

And what did the school district learn? By third grade the “science” children were far ahead of the “reading” children in their reading scores. The reason? Their vocabularies and thinking skills were more advanced. They could read on more topics and understand higher level materials. The “reading” children, by starting earlier, used up a lot of learning time on the skills of reading, while the “science” children spent the time learning real stuff. And when they did begin reading, they were older and knew more and learned in a fraction of the time that the others took.

This research and others like it are compelling. They drive home the fact that each child has only a limited amount of time in his early years. That time can be squandered in trying to teach reading before the “optimum” time for it. Or it can be used wisely in teaching “real stuff” that the child is ready for.”

Kat has done very well with reading lately, particularly in the last week or two. But it has not been easy waiting for this “optimum” time. It’s not been easy to refrain from freaking out either. I hope the results in this study hold true for us.

Our current read-aloud from Sonlight was the closest book:

“Oh, no;” returned the soldier; “I have never seen him. But I spoke to him as he sat behind his screen, and gave him your message. He says he will grant you an audience, if you so desire; but each one of you must enter his presence alone, and he will admit but one each day.”
– The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Who do I tag?
Jen cheated on this part, so I am too. I’m not going to tag anybody. If you want to participate, go right ahead! Just leave me a comment so I know to go take a look. Thanks!

Yeah! Yesterday was Box Day at our house. E’s first grade books arrived from Sonlight. Unfortunately our camera messed up right after this photo so this is the only photo of the event. The kids are excited about the new books and E went to bed looking at one tonight.

We had issues with uploading photos last month so I didn’t get photos from our last day of Kindergarten posted. These are all the books we read and the kids are holding their favorites. I had serious doubts that the book N picked was really his favorite so I let them pick a second book and he then picked the book I expected to be his favorite: The Berenstain Bears’ Big Book of Science and Nature.

I think we read Berenstain Bears all the way through almost 3 times. And we must have read the Fish of the Sea page once a day for a month straight. The kids had it memorized. “Sardine – bass – tuna – flounder – That sunfish is a thousand-pounder!” and “Dogfish bite but they can’t bark.” It’s a great book, but that was a bit much. It eventually was put away for a while and N had to start picking another book to read each day. Last year we started out using the schedule from Sonlight but I eventually started letting each kid pick a book to read from the school pile each day while I picked one or two myself. It worked out pretty well for us and we also added in several more books that weren’t from Sonlight.

Notice that of the top 4 books that they picked, 3 of them are science books. My dad will be so proud. One of the books Emily is holding is actually a book we’ll use this year too. We just happened to already own it and we read several sections before I realized we’d read the whole thing this coming year. Glad she liked it!

Enjoy the photos after the long photo-famine. Thanks to hubby for figuring out the problem with uploading the photos. And shame on me for staying up too late again tonight. Good night!