At Home With Jesus!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

CLE's *revised* Learning to Read program!

Our of all of the great deals I bought at CLE last week...this has to be my favorite! First off let me say that I had the original CLE Learning to Read program and I was not at all impressed.   It sat packed away in a box because I felt it was very dry, boring and I thought the Teacher's guide was hard to follow.   But their new/revised Learning to Read program knocks my socks off! The Teacher's guide's are SOOO full of great stuff! The lessons are fully scripted Plus they have a huge index with all sorts of great stuff (extra tests, games enrichment activities phonics rules, spelling lists, and even a list of words/phrases so you can make your own flash cards!) ...I sort of wish I'd known that.... There is also a grid schedule in the front of the guide so you can plan out all of the major 1st grade subjects (reading, math, Bible and LA) The Light Units start off with simple 'listening' activities, and gradually move on to letter sounds, then simple words They include penmanship, and eventually they add spelling and they progress gradually until the child is reading more complex words The readers are so cute too. (and they also progress gradually) Here's more samples from the Light Units Up until this point I had been very apprehensive about teaching Katie to read. Now I am actually quite excited!!!

• Comments (4) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Monday, October 5, 2009

My visit to CLE

Okay, so I'll tell... Paul had to go on a business trip to Harrisonburg, Virginia - (in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley) and this time... we went with him! It was a very long drive, (19 hrs each way) but I love road trips, and we drove through some beautiful country so the drive was very rewarding. And why did I want to go to Harrisonburg, you may ask? Well...Shenandoah National Park played a big part, but so did the fact that Harrisonburg is the home of....CLE!    And we not only got to see ALL of their products.... but we even got to take a tour! CLE was actually a series of buildings connected by covered tunnels/walkways. We got to see their business offices, the IT/computer department, order processing department, art department, homeschool department, the printing/binding/shipping area, the warehouse, and even the break/lunchroom - which had rows of tables with Bibles/hymnals because they have devotions together as an entire company every morning! The main facility ( where all of the printing/binding machines were) The book store ( my favorite part!) The printing/binding machines  (We took our tour late on Friday afternoon when this department had already shut down for the day, which is why it was so 'quiet.') The warehouse (look at all of those Light Units!) And this was in their 'classroom' area ( where they hold their teacher training seminars.) They said that this board lists all of the places where they have shipped their materials. And finally, their display rack which held one copy of each Light Unit/textbook. It was so much fun to browse through them all! Our tour guide (Rachel) was the main worker at the front desk of the store, and she was SUCH a sweet lady. She even gave us a map of the city and told us the best parks to go to! I wish I had thought to get a photo of her. The art department was really neat! We got to see how they use actual photographs of employees and then use them as models for their illustrations. We also got to see a demonstration of how they used the computer to 'tweak' a photograph for the cover of one of their books. It was so interesting! But - one of the neatest things was that we got to meet one of the authors of some of the stories in their Reading program, Ruth Dobbs.   She was also very sweet and kind. Everyone there was just SO welcoming and friendly, and it was one of the nicest companies I have ever been to. And after the tour, the best part was....I got to browse through all of their 'seconds'.   Materials which may have *slight*  [and I do mean slight]  defects, or they were a display copy - (and therefore are HALF price!)  Here's an example of what would constitute as a 'second' They had just finished printing the first few copies of the second half of their new Learn to Read program...and I got some of the very first printed Lightunits for that!  (and they were even 'seconds'!) Everything pictured above was a 'second' except the 2nd teachers guide and one of the primers! I also got to see the very first Light Unit for the new/revised 1st grade Language Arts program.... Oh BOY...does it look great!   I was sort-of bummed, because if I would have been there one week longer they would have had copies of that for me as well.... but no worries because I found SO many other great deals! I was able to get next year's math programs for Julie and Joseph for less than $20 each! And some preschool/first grade materials for Annabelle and Katie And even though we are doing Bible with MFW, Joseph loves the CLE Bible so much he actually asked for it to do on his own.    How could I say no to that?! CLE definitely was a highlight of our trip!

• Comments (5) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Thursday, April 10, 2008

CLE and other things.....

I feel like we have made some good progress in school this past couple of weeks. We have doubled up chapters in some subjects and whittled away at the workbooks in others.  I am starting to think just maybe the kids will actually finish most of them.....on time! I've had a lot of questions recently about CLE, so I thought I would share some photos of what the kids have been doing in school lately.  (Some of it is CLE...some isn't...if you move your cursor over the photo it will tell what that particular subject is.) Here is what Joseph has been up to! And here is what Julie has been doing..... One thing we haven't done in awhile is Five In a Row.... I'm torn between throwing in a FIAR unit here and there, or 'pushing through' our regular materials and using FIAR during the summer.     It might just be time for a week of 'rowing.'

• Comments (1) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Sharing our school day.

Here are some of the things that the kids have been working on this week! In Bible, Julie has been learning about the birth of Jesus ( great timing, huh?!!!) (This is the Voyages curriculum) And Joseph has been learning about Joshua, Gideon, and Samuel. (This is the CLE curriculum) And for our memory verse, we studied Proverbs 15:1 this week (I make my own notebooking pages based on our verse in "The Memory Bible") In history, (Story of the World,) we have been learning about ancient Mesopotamia, (Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Sargon, Hammurabi, etc)  This also coincides nicely with Joseph's Old Testament stories in his Bible lessons! Here is a picture of one of the Babylonian ziggurats, followed by a 'homemade version.' For Language Arts.....(both kids use CLE) Joseph is learning more phonics/spelling rules While Julie did AWESOME on her quiz!  (She also "aced' the spelling portion!) In math, Julie learned how to add and subtract fractions  (She uses CLE) And....we decided to give Joseph a trial run on CLE math!!!  (He had been using Saxon, but I really prefer the simplicity and layout of CLE much better so we are letting him try one Light Unit, and then we will re-evaluate and decide from there.) Here is a sample of his work from this week (He did a great job!) And to top it all off - we even managed to fit in some Latin this week! (We use Power Glide Jr. Adventure Latin) It's been a busy week!

• Comments (5) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link