New Printable Phonics Program

The printable reading games in Robot Reader develop vital skills that are essential to reading success while children have so much fun that they don't even realize that they are learning. But while they are having fun they also learn to -

Identify and name letters of the alphabet
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Identify rhyming words
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Identify the sounds of our spoken language
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Recognize letter to sound relationships
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Segment words into sounds
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Blend sounds to make words
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Identify and recognize common letter patterns
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Develop and expand their sight vocabulary
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Extend their vocabulary
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Develop word recognition strategies
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Develop comprehension skills
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Develop skills with homonyms, contractions, prefixes and suffixes

Mixing fun and games while learning reading skills, can't get much better than that! You can see the program at Robot Reader

Rocket Italian

I actually bought this program and if any of you are considering a foreign language package for your child these "Rocket" programs are really worth the money.

Pictures of Snakes

If your kids like animals (and what kids don't) then check out this site. What an opportunity for learning there is to be had here. Pictures of Snakes and all kinds of other animals and reptiles. Anyway, very cool.

Unschooling

I'm a worrier. I admit it. I think I may need a twelve step program I'm so bad sometimes. Yet the other day something happened that made me relax a little bit.

I work from home doing computer repair and custom programming. The wonderful part about that is I can be home. The bad part about that is when I get a call from a client I have to go. Well, my oldest went back to public school this year (don't kick me out of the club just yet) We are adopting a foster child that has been living with us since the beginning of summer. You cannot make big decisions like homeschooling for foster children. So, my oldest decided to go back to public school for high school with our foster child. They're both doing quite well, in fact the World History teacher told them they could not participate anymore in class because they were answering all of the questions between the two of them.:)

Anyway, back to my story. With the oldest back in PS I have to take the youngest with me everywhere. All of my clients know that I homeschool and get a big kick out of Carson tagging along with me. Of course he is very well behaved.

Got a call on Tuesday, had to go to a clients house to fix a problem. Carson and I loaded up and headed out. I was worried about getting school in.

On the way home Carson and I started talking about this and that. He started to explain to me the life cycle of the butterfly because we have a cattepillar that we are watching, waiting for it to spin it's cocoon. Then we had a conversation about jellyfish and how we have caused "dead zones" in the ocean with pollution and jellyfish eat bacteria and heal the "dead zones".

He explained that Geology was the study of the Earth and that my client was a type of Geologist because he does surveys for the oil companies.

He asked me how much I charge per hour for my services then calculated how much of a tip my client had given me for the job I had just performed.

We discussed the present tense and past tense of the word "metamorphosis".

The only thing we didn't cover was history, and really I'm sure we talked about something history related I just can't remember.

Sometimes school is not about sitting down and doing book work. Carson learned a lot that day. So did I.

Mythology, Folklore, and Religion

I was hitting my stumble toolbar today when I happened upon Encyclopedia Mythica. If your kids are studying the classic Greek Gods this is the place to be. They even have geneology tables.

70000+ articles on mythology, folklore and religion. The folklore section is very interesting with over 147 articles on Arthurian legend.

Phonics Worksheets

Looking for phonics worksheets?

Phonics, it's a must have for teaching your children good reading skills. I know I remember filling out phonics worksheets in grade school. For awhile there, phonics kind of went out of fashion, I know our ps tried a "whole word" approach for awhile. But, phonics is back now and here are some resources for phonics worksheets.


Tampa reads has quite a few printable phonics worksheets.

Kidzone has a nice selection of phonics worksheets available.

Or for a phonics program available for download try Uncle Rogers Reader

Flashcards

Neat Flashcards

Metric Conversions

Need to convert to or from Metric? Check this out

Pretty Handy

Perseid Meteor Shower

The legendary Perseid meteor shower will peak in the next few days.

What a great homeschool lesson this could be.(And just plain ole' fun!)

Best viewing for North America will be Early Monday morning August 13th from 12am to dawn.

Happy Viewing!

ClickN' READ Phonics

The world's only virtual phonics classroom!

ClickN' READ Phonics

Money back Guarantee.


ClickN’ READ Phonics is the first ever reading program to teach just like a live tutor. Meeting federal requirements it teaches the entire phonics curriculum required for K-3rd. .