Homeschool updateWe've been doing school for almost two months now. Not always consistently three mornings a week, we did take time off to go on a couple of trips or because we were recovering from said trips or to go to the state fair, but I feel pretty good about how much we've done so far. It's one of the things we like about homeschooling, right? The flexibility to take time off when we need it, or even to do school in the car on the way to Texas (which we did and it was a good way to pass some of the long days on the road).
Our Mondays are supposed to be nature walk mornings. We've actually only been to three parks because it's been so hot. One to have a real nature walk, another to visit the nature center and then play on the playground, and the last to play in the creek and then at the spray park and playground there too. On the other Mondays we went to the Children's museum a few times, had a play date with a friend, and were traveling.
We've been not so consistent on our morning walks because we don't often get up on time. And the past couple days we've tried to take walks this week have ended in tantrums from one of us. :) So I'm hesitant to go again this week. We were having a worship time (which includes a short Bible story, a few Catechism questions we're working on, a Bible passage we're memorizing, prayer and sometimes some songs) right before we started our school "work", but the past few days we've gotten up early enough to do a worship time at breakfast and have Nate join us, which has been very nice. I'm hoping we can continue doing that until Half Pint is born.
We start school time with a preschool activity, as I call it, which works on preschool skills**. The favorites have been:
1. Using tweezers to sort craft puff balls or beans.
2. Playing follow the leader to work on gross motor skills--walking backwards, hopping, running, skipping, marching, etc.
3. Playing Go Fish with cards that have alphabet letters on them.
4. Using a dropper to transfer colored water (red, blue, and yellow) to an egg carton--talked about mixing two colors to make a new color too.
5. Playing memory--regular memory game or have used number cards (from deck of cards), cards with colors, shapes, etc.
6. Hammering tees into styrofoam
7. Memorizing address and phone number to the tune of "London Bridge" and then playing London Bridge while we practiced it
8. Using small pitchers to pour water into containers--I took old plastic containers and drew lines on them to practice pouring up to the line. Ally didn't really pay attention to the lines, but Becca did. I recommend doing this outside.
9. Drawing in salt--poured salt into a shallow box, drawer, or baking pan and use fingers or toothpicks or other tools to draw in it. We did this outside today.
10. Bean bag toss and catch--tossed to each other and also tossed into a container from different distances
Next is supposed to be reading lessons with Becca, but we've set them aside yet again. I'm trying to be patient and let her choose when to do the reading lessons. To force her to do it or set up some reward system would be frustrating and not worth it, I think. The reward for learning to read is knowing how to do it and enjoying the books you can read on your own. And I know she loves books. We read plenty and she listens to many books on CD. I think Nate and I both expected her to read much earlier because we do read so many books and it's hard having some friends with kids who have started reading at 4 or even 3-years-old. But I have to just stop looking at other kids and let Becca do it at her own pace. She can read some Bob books and short vowel sound words. So anyway, all that is to say, reading lessons are on hold.
Then we do a math activity. Favorites have been:
1. Sorting and counting M&Ms--then recording our numbers and deciding which is least, most, and equal--and eating them!!
2. Playing with pattern blocks to make our own designs and also using printouts from prekinders.com/pattern-blocks/.
3. Counting and sorting colored pasta or types of pasta.
4. Using rulers to measure different size straws and then measuring other things around the room--we measure to the nearest inch.
5. Practicing counting by 5s and 10s--we did this while sorting coins and by counting nickels from their bed time nickel jars.
6. Playing Uno with just the number cards.
7. Playing War with the number cards from a deck of cards.
8. Playing Go Fish with number cards from a deck of cards.
Lastly we do our read-alouds from the Sonlight P4/5 curriculum. We crunch 5 days of reading into 3, usually. Though this sounds like a lot, it really isn't that much at this level. Becca does a narration from one of our readings and Ally does one every once in a while, and I copy them down into their notebooks. Becca has gotten much more thorough in her narrations as we've gone along. We just read and enjoy the other stories. Then both girls do a few pages from their workbooks. Ally is doing the Kumon First book of Tracing. Becca is doing the readiness workbooks that come with the Sonlight curriculum. Both like doing them a lot.
I've found some of the readings from the P4/5 level to be good. I like the
Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book and
Uncle Wiggly's Storybook the best.
That's it. It sounds like a lot when I type it all out, but at the most it takes us 2 hours to get through it all.
**So this part is confusing to me. Ally is preschool age, but Becca could really be considered kindergarten age. She has friends in both grades and I'm not sure what to group her in. The curriculum we're using is a pre-k curriculum, but in some ways I'd consider her in K. I guess it doesn't really matter, but it is something that's bothered me.
