Meet Gab And Jill

I'd like to share a few of the short story books that I wrote for my kids many years ago. Back when they were small and I would have the liberty to pick out what to teach them from home. I drew my inspiration writing these short stories based from our daily mundane activities which transpired around our kitchen or school table. I took value from them by coming up with a list of vocabularies that would describe what ever we were doing at the moment. The list of vocabularies served as anchor to our stories.

I found this approach very useful in instilling love for reading in them at an early age as they found the stories relatable. Little by little they learned to read phonetically as they decoded the sound of each letter and blended them into words. 

While we filled our family library with a collection of colorful illustrated story books through time, I also felt it was necessary to come up with a set of our very own early readers' compilation of short stories without the pictures. I wanted for them to patiently learn how to blend the sounds of the letters as they were also encouraged to think imaginatively. 

My stories were open-ended so we can always enjoy a rich discussion after each reading time. I would let them decide how they would want our story to have a good ending. This became a useful supplement to my kids' reading and comprehension. So, teaching reading to our kids can be so much fun and engaging.

My lil "Nancy Drew"

My daughter was 3 yrs old when she started reading phonetically and when she reached age 4, she was already reading these books to me herself. We knew we have an early reader. Now she's hooked on reading the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories and would love to someday publish her own magazine for girls!

My son started reading these books a few weeks ago. I thought it was a thrill watching him as he read our own lil family stories. Knowing that he is a highly tactile and a kinesthetic learner, I would give him more time to read through a story as he acts out the characters as he pleases. Now, would that be a problem by me? Not at all, because by doing so, that's when I'd be able to gauge his reading comprehension. He is five years old. And I could care less if he struggled blending some words. It's music to my ears. 

One of his favorites is "Gab and Jill." The first time he read it, he puts his book down and asked..."Mom , is Gab and Jill, Ate and I?"

Note:  ( Ate - pronounced Uh-teh, Tagalog word, a title used to address a female sibling as a sign of respect)

Looking back, these story books have been very valuable to  me as I used them to teach  my  children  how to read.    Our memories    built  around  these  reading materials are so precious that I wanted to share them with you today.

Here are the links to my books. You may download and print them, it's FREE!!!

Gab and Jill

Unit 7 Story With Vocabulary

Unit 8 Story With Vocabulary

Unit 9 Story With Vocabulary

Unit 10 Story With Vocabulary

Left Thumb Up for "b"...Right Thumb up for "d"

This is a storybook I wrote about 7 years ago for our then unica hija, 4 year old Bethany. I wrote this book primarily to fill the need to have a set of non-illustrated story books to stimulate her imagination. I was intentional in teaching  her to read phonetically; decoding the sounds of every letter; blending them together to form words. 

It was totally the opposite during my time because I remember learning to read by memorization (like most of us parents did) with the help of picture books. I thought that bookstores these days have a plethora of picture books that use heavy illustrations from cover to cover so that kids have become overly stimulated visually, leaving no room for creating imagination. 

When I wrote this collection of short stories, apart from my daughter, I had a lil boy in mind. I envisioned him sitting next to his big sister and I while we do school at our kitchen table. But that had been yrs ago, and that boy came into flesh a year after I wrote the book. I'd asked myself if this is how it feels when you're able to live your dream. I thought of God's faithfulness to us thru the years. These are tough times but He has provided for our every need. He had been gracious for giving us the opportunity to teach our kids ourselves and to be able to have that freedom to choose the materials to teach them. 

I watched my son as he read his storybook phonetically. He was having a lil problem remembering which one is the "b" and which one is the "d." So, I had him do the left thumb up for the "b" and  the right thumb up for the "d." Problem solved.

My girl loves creating lapbook projects to showcase what she learned for the entire quarter. This would be her output project in Civics that we will compile in a portfolio to be submitted for evaluation and review to our homeschool provider in Manila.

Here are the links to my books should you want to sample them for FREE. Enjoy! 

Gab and Jill

Unit 7 Story With Vocabulary

Unit 8 Story With Vocabulary

Unit 9 Story With Vocabulary

Unit 10 Story With Vocabulary

Learning from Your Child One Page at a Time

For this Science lesson, instead of telling my boy to color, which he despised lately, I told him to just circle the pictures that showed how to take care of one's body.

BOY: Teacher, DONE!

MOM: Hmmmm...Can you explain why you think reading, like what this lil boy in the picture is doing, showed taking care of one's body?

BOY: What, Mommmyyy? He's taking care of his body.

MOM: Well, you did ok on all the pictures, but I'm just wondering how and why you think reading can also be a way of taking good care of your body as you would take a shower or brush your teeth or eat good food ?

(Mom was trying her best not to say "You're wrong" right away for her son's debatable answer)

BOY: Mommmmyyyy, right Daddy always tells us to read books because it will protect our brain? We needed to take care of our brain too. Right, Mommmyyy? Reading protects your brain...it also makes you smart too. Daddy always says that.

MOM: Oh, I see...I see...

BOY: I told you so.

These two photos above are sample pages of what you can see inside my girl's notebook in World History. She reads Mystery of  History Vol. 2. At the end of every lesson, she would usually narrate to me what she learned and discovered on her reading time. I would act as a student listening to my "Teacher" telling me a story, oftentimes, verbatim. I'm still in the process of learning the art of "not interrupting" while my child articulates her ideas.  Photo 1 shows men wearing plaid Scottish skirts while photo 2 shows young Marco Polo with specks of cinnamon powder around him.

Yes, we've moved out from our old schoolroom to this new spot at our kitchen. Moving out from our old school space was the next best thing to do to accommodate a pre-schooler boy that's highly tactile and kinesthetic; a boy who can't sit still, a  boy who kept asking for a  water break every 3mins, a boy 

 who needs to be strategically seated near the pantry for when he had to do his counting drill with manipulatives like MnM's, Kisses, Fruitloops, Cornflakes...

As Easy as ABC... Garlic Spaghetti...

Almost 2 decades ago, an Italian missionary friend of mine cooked for me a what she called "classic Italian comfort food" that's as easy as ABC to prepare and yet delightfully delicious and tasted expensive. I mean, to this day, remembering her kindness, cooking for a sick friend that I was, that really meant so much.

Down memory lane, here's what she did: 

1.     took a left-over pasta spaghetti from the fridge

2.     melted butter in a pan with a little drizzle of olive oil and stirred in the left-over pasta noodles

3.     got a medium-sized red tomato...pomodoro ehh...poked it with her finger on its base and sort of squeezed it with her bare hand so that the juice really oozed out as she threw it in the pasta while stirring

5.     cracked the egg directly in the pasta, stirring it well, turned off the heat

6.     plated for me...the poor hand-beaten pomodoro seated nicely on the center of the plate above the hill of my pasta grandiose, peppered...

The lesson I learned that day was invaluable; there's nothing like being cooked for by a dear friend especially when you're sick, it's like taking a paracetamol without the bitter taste; as a Filipino, trying to cook Italian, I sometimes over complicate things, and oftentimes it stemmed from my own insecurity and the feeling of intimidation because it's a foreign dish; and last, good pasta always come al dente, which literally meant with bite to your teeth in Italian.

My kids could tell if your pasta is good or the otherwise. 

Just days ago, we decided to have a quiet family dinner at one of the so-called Italian fine dining restaurants from our local neighborhood. We loved the location. We loved it that there was just us eating at dinner time on a Sunday evening while we "people-watched" the families flocking to the big mall across the street. We loved the ambiance, the soft lighting and the sweet music being played in the air. 

The servers were nice. We thought it was going to be a perfect night until our pasta was served. It was overcooked, stale, it tasted like it was thawed from long storage...how disappointing. So my kids, knowing that the money that went to pay for that dinner had been hard-earned, managed to finish their plates with occasional look of dismay on their faces. At length, we discussed over dinner what not to order in Filipino restaurants claiming to serve Italian. We concluded that if we wanted authentic Italian pasta, it's either we invite a true blue Italian cook to come over at our house or just D-I-O, Do-It-OURSELVES!