The Land of Nouns

I loved being a teacher. It was a fabulous job. From the time I was a small child I only ever wanted to be a teacher. There was that one summer school session at Northwestern College where I rashly considered a career in science, but quickly reconfirmed my calling as a teacher once that interesting biology class ended. After five years of teaching kindergarten and three years of teaching elementary Spanish, I was thrilled to have the blessing of staying home with our first child. Now after five years of being home with our growing family, I am confident that I love being a mommy even more than I loved being a career teacher - even in the desperately hard times.

I love watching my children learn. Being able to homeschool has been the best of both worlds for me. I get to enjoy the work of my career choice with the people I love most. Since I both work and live with children who have gone through some pretty big past hurts, it can mean that there is no break or escape for me like there is for other people who have chosen traditional schooling for their children or who, for whatever reason, work outside their home. Learning to take those breaks - and finding the time when the children can handle me taking those breaks - has been another challenge altogether. I'm learning.

We began teaching English last year using a method of phonics called The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Spalding with the intensive help of Reading Works written by Jay and Jeanne Patterson, local Minnesota teachers and authors. Mr. Patterson was my high school English teacher and I have seen the success of his curriculum in my own kindergarten classroom teaching during my five years of teaching kindergartners to read and write.

Having never been an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher before, this was new territory for me, but last winter when we arrived home with the new big kiddos, our four year old daughter (home since age 4 months) was learning phonics and how to read, so it seemed like a natural time to introduce English phonetic sounds to all of the children. Fast forward 15 months and everyone is reading at our house except Mr. Three and Three Quarters and he is fast on his way to joining the rest.

As the new kiddos English skills have grown we have added more opportunities to maintain their Spanish outside of our home, including attending a Spanish-speaking church service weekly, where we have been richly blessed by the pastor and other families. We have also begun learning English grammar and what fun we have had! Oh yes, grammar is fun. At the moment we are working slowly through the Grammar Works curriculum also by Jay Patterson. Since the curriculum is already written for grades K-8 it fits all of our children's learning needs. We are working on identifying English nouns, both common and proper. Just today we visited the Land of the Proper Nouns where we wore our best Proper Noun Princess attire. All proper nouns have super special names that begin with capital letters.

This common noun peasant just snuck in wearing his regular old blue jeans for snack time. Poor guy, common nouns don't get the honor of being capitalized. He wasn't deterred from enjoying a happy snack at the royal table, though. He's a determined kind of common noun peasant...

After snack, the Proper Noun Princesses played a game of common and proper nouns. They dealt out a stack of home-made cards with both common and proper nouns. Then they took turns reading the nouns to each other and determining which list the noun went into - either the common or proper noun list. When they play again they will sort their lists by people, place, and thing. We love grammar.

If you homeschool and are are looking for phonics, reading, writing and grammar curriculum that works well, check out Reading Works and Grammar Works. In past years the Pattersons have been at the MACHE homeschooing convention - so you could check them out and attend a workshop or two there. Or if you are a classroom teacher hoping to find the best solution to help your students in these areas, you could check the website The Works People to find resources and trainings in your area.

It's quite a riot managing all of the things that are likely to occur in our home on any given day - medical appointments, PTSD induced raging, developmental delay behaviors, visits by county case managers or adoption social workers - and then add in a fairly structured and highly intentional school/work schedule for the kiddos. It is quite a balancing act, but I love it.