Author: Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool

EP Third Reader is Now Available

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool7 Comments

EP Third Reader

Find the EP Third Reader in the EP Store.

This is our Reading 3 course in book form. It contains the reading and vocabulary lessons from the third level. Vocabulary exercises and other lessons, such as main idea, are included in the book so that students don’t miss anything found in the online course. This book completely replaces the online course for reading.

Here are some pictures. In this first picture you can see that the assignments are labeled as day numbers, matching the site. The assignment directions and questions are included, again same as the site. Then the reading is included right with the assignment. Since most reading is found in the public domain, we are able to do this. And, I included a few pictures.

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Vocabulary exercises include matching and multiple choice activities. Students are told to write their answers on a separate piece of paper.

 

 

 

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Answers are included for the vocabulary exercises and for the reading comprehension questions.

 

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Book Stats:

Pages: 482

Size: 7.5 x 9.25 inches

Font: Times New Roman 11 (mostly)

Cover: Yellow (next in the rainbow)

Inside: black and white

Ready to Order?

EP Second Reader Now Available

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool13 Comments

Available now in the EP Store!

Here we go. Another book is complete. EP’s Reading 2 curriculum (which is all of the reading and vocabulary assignments from level 2) is now in book form. The 180 days of assignments have been included along with all of the readings. Vocabulary activities and any lessons that were found online were recreated in the book. Here’s a vocabulary matching activity. The students are told to write their answers on a separate piece of paper. Someone’s working on a workbook which will have these vocabulary activities and more.

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You can use the book alone, or hop online to play vocabulary review games where indicated, or any time really!

There are not many pictures, but I have included some pictures in the poetry section to help with comprehension.

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Two times in the curriculum I tell the kids they can ask someone to read the poem/story to them if they find it difficult. It also mentions where you can listen to the story online.

Answers for the reading comprehension questions and vocabulary exercises are found in the back of the book.

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Book Stats:

size: 7.5 in. by 9.25 in. (same as EP First Reader)

#of pages: 378

font: mostly Times New Romans size 12

color: black and white (inside), orange (outside)  Since I am making seven readers, I am coloring them like the rainbow. The first reader was red. This one is orange. The EP Third Reader will be yellow, etc.

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As with the other books, free books will be sent to those who need them. (Go to the EP store page.)

 

Learn to Read with EP Now Available!

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool27 Comments

Updated: Our most recent edition is the second edition It is EP’s Learn to Read course and has the updated names and language now found in the online course.

This book has all of the reading lessons from Getting Ready 1 and Getting Ready 2 (which have been combined on the site onto the page named “Learn to Read.”)

For the sight words, I wrote them in large font. To teach my kids I covered up the words with a large index card to help focus attention on the word I was introducing and practicing. I would say the word and then have my child say the word. I would ask what the word was. After I showed my kid all the words, I would show a word to see if it was remembered. In only takes a few minutes, a few times a day. It works just like on the site. Review the words a few times during the day (I suggest breakfast, lunch and dinner) and then have your child read the lesson to you.

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Every single lesson has its image from the book included.

After the Primer, McGuffey’s First Eclectic Reader is included. Again, all images are included. On the site there are no longer sight words. In this portion, I typed out the new words for each section to make them easier to show your child since they don’t have all the phonetic markings on them.

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McGuffy’s First Eclectic Reader: includes new words, story and original image for each lesson.

Finally, there are over 100 phonics lessons from the site. Since I was working so closely with them, I was able to make some edits which will begin appearing in the course on Easy Peasy’s site. These are the pdf phonics lessons from Learn to Read (Getting Ready 2).

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Over 100 phonics lessons are included.

Book Stats:

Size: 8.5 by 11 inches

Length: 305 pages

Color: black and white

Font: differs, mostly Times New Roman, size 16-28, depending on where in the book

Ready to buy?

 

EP First Reader

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool41 Comments

EP First Reader

 

I told you I would tell you more about the EP First Reader. This book is the offline version of our Reading 1 course which is the reading and vocabulary lessons from Level 1. I made the decision to go totally offline so you wouldn’t be caught off guard on any given day with needing the internet.

The EP First Reader, by necessity, had to be altered in some ways from the online course, though I tried to keep things as similar as I could where possible. I had to replace readings that weren’t in the public domain, and I created reading and vocabulary activities to replace online ones. These are simple activities such as coming up with synonyms and antonyms of words and coming up with words in the same “families.”

Each day is labeled and is followed by the day’s assignment, just like on the site. The assignments were edited as necessary to avoid references to links, etc.  The assignment directions are immediately followed by the day’s reading. There are no longer instructions to stop reading at a certain point. They can just read until they get to the next day marker.

If there is a question in the assignment directions, it is followed by (Answers), so you know there’s an answer in the back if you want to look it up. Answers are labeled by day number

 

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I did include some, not all, pictures from the readings. In the EP First Reader this is mostly for fun and to break things up. In older levels it is used sometimes to aid in understanding, especially with the poetry. (The picture below is from my Word document, not the book.)

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What else would you like to know? There is no longer a worksheet to fill out for a book report, just directions for what to write. The last book included is one that had never before been published. It’s a replacement book I used. It’s one I wrote about eight years ago and is based on real life, when our family lived in a Roma (Gypsy) village in Macedonia.

Over the weekend I edited the book to include a note on the last page. It asks that you consider passing the book along to a family in need when your family is finished with it. We have gotten a lot of requests for free books, and I would encourage everyone to take part in the ministry of helping other families homeschool by passing on your book instead of reselling it. We’ll facilitate your doing that if you are interested when the time comes.

Some book stats: 344 pages, 7.5 by 9.25 inches, font is size 12

This book is for sale now. I’ll update when it’s available on Amazon and on Kindle. From what I checked the shipping is a little cheaper from the CreateSpace store.

I’ve Been Working on a Big Project

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool43 Comments

Before I dive in, I want to respond to some of the comments that were on facebook when I announced I was going to make a big announcement. For those of you who didn’t see them, I was posting pictures of a book. And for a lot of you, this will be more than you imagined. 🙂

EP First Reader

1. I had intended to only announce what I had been working on when I announced I had an announcement. The beginnings are ready, but the rest are in the works. So a warning to those SOOOOO excited about this, you may have to be a little patient for what you want.

2. I’m not going to sell out of books. I am publishing them for free through Amazon.com’s Create Space. You will be buying them from Amazon. They won’t run out. They also get most of the money from the sales and set the base price of the book. Which leads me to…

3. I’m not going to “make a fortune.” I will get a royalty from each book. Some proceeds will go to scholarships. I’m committed to EP being free. If you need these books because you don’t have internet at home or one computer and ten kids and can’t afford the books, there’s a book request form.

4. This isn’t turning into a business. I had no business plan of starting to sell books. This had never been my intention! (story below) This is still a ministry. Please don’t assume I’m making all this money and don’t need donations. Donations cover all my costs and are an encouragement to me.

Okay, ready???

In August I got to spend some extra time in fasting and in focused prayer and Bible study. This is one of the things that came out of that time. The Lord gave me a new direction for EP, and it’s offline. EP online isn’t going anywhere! No one start to sweat! I have five kids using it and another future EP user.

The first part of going offline is creating readers. That’s what you’ve been seeing pictures of on facebook. The readers are the reading curriculum in 100% offline form. Most of the reading curriculum is made up of public domain books. They can be republished. The books contain the 180 days of assignments and right there with each assignment is the reading for that day. (No more “Stop in the middle of page…”)

For vocabulary, where there was a matching game online, I made a matching activity in the book. Where there was a multiple choice game, I put in a multiple choice activity. I put in the directions to write your answers on a separate paper. No need to write on a few pages of huge book. (This brings up that I’ve asked a family that makes a lot of puzzle books through Amazon’s Create Space and who gives EP free access to their test-making website to make a workbook that would have all of those activities in it for those who want to have their kids write directly on the page.)

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Later in the book when they do the same thing for review, I tell them they can either do the vocabulary review game online or go to Day ___ to review their words and send them to the matching activity or whatever. They would be using the Review Games page on the site if they did that. This way I keep it offline, but you still can do some of the more fun things online if you choose.

And yes, there are answers. All of the answers to those activities and all of the answers to the reading comprehension questions are in the back of the book listed by day number.

You will find changes to the reading courses in the readers. Sometimes there was a lesson or activity instead of a reading. I decided to replace all of those with offline lessons and activities. There are actually very few lessons, like rhyming and rhythm in poetry or antonyms and synonyms in vocabulary. Those were replaced in the books with similar things; I put in little lessons and activities, so your child’s not missing out on any learning by using the readers.

Some changes in the readers (as opposed to the online reading curriculum) come from the fact that not every reading is from the public domain, and I can’t publish them. New readings were chosen as replacements. I tried to keep things as similar to the online course as I could since you might be pairing this book with the online language arts course of the same level. Please don’t think you are missing anything important by using the books; you can think of it as getting bonus materials. 🙂

The store is mostly things “coming” but the EP First Reader is ready for sale. I will do a separate post on Monday specifically about the EP First Reader.

If you are wanting more offline materials, read on, but first I want to tell you what I don’t think it’s going to involve. I have no intention at this point of doing all the courses completely offline. EP was created as an online curriculum and every day there are online activities that can’t be reproduced. Reading lends itself to book format and I thought it was probably the most time consuming thing done on the computer, so this will ease the computer time for families. [outdated: Also, I could never make a book of all the printables from the courses because I don’t own them. They aren’t mine to sell or even to give away. That’s why I have to point you to their sites instead of just giving you all the worksheets all together for a course. ] (NOTE: We have been making our own printables so that we can make workbooks of all the worksheets in the courses.)

There is another part to going offline that’s not ready, but I’m ready to announce that I’m working on it. I put this info on our new store page as well. Introducing…

The Genesis Curriculum  

Coming 2015 

This is a 100% offline curriculum covering science, social studies, language arts, Bible and foreign language (with learning Hebrew). All lessons are based off of the book of Genesis.

This is intended to be used as a “one-room schoolhouse” approach with everyone gathering around and learning together with mom (or other homeschool teacher) guiding the completely prepared lesson. This will be accompanied by one workbook for each child that will have all of their work for the year. There’s no daily busywork, but there are grammar, vocabulary, and spelling activities as well as science and social studies assessments that will be completed in their workbook.

Daily lessons include reading a portion of Genesis, practicing a weekly memory verse, doing a dictation for handwriting if desired, writing spelling words from one of the day’s verses, learning a vocabulary word from the day’s Scripture, learning a Hebrew word or practicing verses in Hebrew, covering a science and then social studies topic inspired by the reading from Genesis, a discussion question and finally writing.

[My intention is to make this 180 days; we’ll see. I think there will be additional years of this created. I’m doing these lessons now with kids ages 6-12.] (Note: There are four years of this curriculum, which puts history and science offline.)