Free Phonics Help & Printable Workbook

Teaching phonics does not have to mean an investment in expensive programs like Hooked on Phonics or A Beka phonics. Now I love A Beka phonics and I have been using it for years for each of my children. The initial investment has been well worth my money as I continue to use it year after year with my six children. However, if I had not already made this investment you would find me using a wonderful free website found at Starfall.

This program allows children to use basic computer skills (operating a mouse) to learn the letters of the alphabet, play some matching games, and teach them the phonetic sound. There is also a great workbook in two different handwriting fonts you can download to accompany this learning. (you will need adobe acrobat) Even if you are not on a tight budget I would seriously check this out.

Where do I log hours for Reading or Language in my daily log?

One of the things that confused me when I began homeschooling was understanding the difference between Reading and Language Arts.  Some places seperate the two and some teach reading as part of Language Arts.  Unless you are ordering all your curriculum straight from a place like www.abeka.com or www.bjupress.com than you may have difficulty understanding where to log the hours for these two subjects. 

Language Arts includes:

• parts of speech
• sentence structure
• word usage
• punctutation usage
• writing
• reference skills
• using reference materials

Reading

• phonics
• word recognition
• vocabulary
• oral & silent reading
• reading comprehension
• literature
• composition

You can find more detailed information in the following link.  It is the scope and sequence from Bob Jones University Press.  http://www.bjupress.com/catalog_pdfs/scope_sequence08.pdf