Big Bro's Sea Life Work & Reading Rods Work Short i

Big Bro is certainly getting into doing his work each morning.
I don't think that there will be much of a difference for him from what we have been doing for "summer" to what we will be doing for "school"...we officially start homeschooling on August 20th, so these last few weeks have just been a slow warm-up to our routine.

He and Little Bro have gotten into the swing of things and it is generally like clockwork in the morning.

Big Bro chose to do some Puzzle book work. He did a great job with a 48 piece puzzle.
Then, he went right into Reading Rods work - short i.
He is coming along nicely with his reading. Sometimes, though, when he comes to a word he does not know, he always sounds out the word with a long vowel sound first and then, if it sounds funny to him, he sounds it out with a short vowel sound.

This is the first time we have used Reading Rods.

Pros:
The Reading Rods program has many nice features: multi-sensory, uses color coded cubes for vowels / consonants, and has decent, mostly realistic stories for the different levels.
The pages in the books aren't too cluttered and the stories make some sense.

Cons:
The letter cubes are very tricky to get to snap together.
The letter cubes are hard plastic and make a great deal of noise when accidentally dropped.

Wrapped up the morning with listening to a Smithsonian Sea Life Alphabet book on CD and then, found all of the animals on the accompanying poster to the CD.

Then, a playdate at IKEA for the afternoon!
The boys had a great time with their buddies...and the mommies had fun, too:)