Progress My Girls Are Making

This whole pregnancy thing almost has me convinced to do unschooling. I said, "almost."

It really is amazing when you put quality books in front of them and not a lot of digital entertainment, how they seek out learning on their own. I was so worried about my five year old. She's six now. She wasn't reading Bob books. Teaching her the sounds of the letters was one frustration after another.

We've kept plugging away at the phonics cards and doing a little reading here and there. And, mainly, I read to her and her sister. She listened to a lot of third/fourth grade level reading in our narration time. And, I must say that I've done a lot less narration, hardly any really...since being pregnant. Natalie, my eight year old, has been doing reading and written narration, but since being pregnant, I've hardly done any oral narration. I don't know if the timing just worked out, or if it was just the time for my six year old to be developmentally ready, but all the sudden the last few months (as I've been doing less reading), she's had a desire to read. By in large, she doesn't want to read "readers" she wants to read REAL (Living) books...Around The World In Eighty Days (kids edition), Little House On The Prairie. She works through it really slow, but she does decipher the words and read. And, she tells people she meets, "Do you know what? I read chapter books."

Here is a story she wrote recently. I thought it was creative, so I wanted to share it with you. A lot of her letters were backwards and I'll share her creative spelling, but her writing just tickles me.

A Bear and the Pig

A bear heard a pig oinking and the bear startied to followed the oinking. The pig startied to oinking eivn louder. It looked around but the bear ws beihhiend a tree. Win the pig ws not looking, the bear jumt out of his hieddying spot and jumps on the pig. The bear startied (to) fiend his Mom and Dad, but win he caim bak with his Mom and Dad the ham was was not thear. The fammully was sad.

The end

An Interpretation

So, basically the baby bear killed the pig, but couldn't carry him off and went to get his Mom and Dad, but when the bear family arrived to where the pig was, the pig was gone.