Satori Smiles

We’re on a big ETC kick! Explode the Code is an inexpensive phonics workbook series, that is great to supplement our reading program. Since we’re almost finished with our formal phonics (OPG), we’re back to these workbooks and just started ETC 3. This level will be all review in terms of phonics/reading, and we’ll be hitting ETC 4 later this summer, which will be closer to her current level.

ETC 3 introduces handy little rules which enforce what we already know. For example, “If a little word ends in y, the y says long-i.”

If Satori didn’t like these workbooks, I wouldn’t make her do them, but she totally loves them. She asks to do them everyday lately. She averages 6-8 pages a day right now, that would be 2-3 page spreads like this. Oops, I forgot to take a photo of an example of one of their sentence pages. Last spring, the sentences were just too much for a new reader, now they’re a breeze. We always laugh at the sentences/pictures.

She always makes sure to put a smile on my face or a laugh in my day when I correct the pages. She can find a way to insert a joke or something cute in almost everything she touches.

So we’re enjoying our ETC program right now and seeing I just ordered ETC 4-8, I hope we continue to do them, especially when our phonics program ends. As you can see above, they’re also great to supplement handwriting, spelling and even a bit of vocabulary.

That’s it. I am finally convinced that we’re going to continue to use First Language Lessons, but we’re going to ZOOM through it! Satori’s got a good memory, she memorizes the poems after I say them a few times, she’s got the grammar definitions down and understands it all.

I thought we started a bit early with this program, so we were only doing a few days a week. This month I pushed that up to 4x a week, and today I decided to do TWO lessons at a time. Each lesson only took a few minutes anyway. Life is getting more exciting now that we moved out of nouns and learned two new things, woah! Satori now knows about pronouns, and easily picks them out of any sentence I read. We’re just started verbs, with an introduction to action verbs. That’s Lesson 54.

I wrote a few sentences on the white board today, and Satori marked them with an “n” for noun and a “v” for verb.  It was easy and kinda fun!

After we finish FLL 1/2, I think we will be moving to MCT Grammar Island, perhaps this winter or next spring. This program starts at Third Grade, but I’ve seen a few families who started it early. The sample pages look easy enough for us to start, but I’m open to advice here if anyone is using it…