My goal is to write one post a month titled Homeschool Highlights which will highlight what we’ve been learning about that month!

We have had a very interesting start to our first official homeschool year!

We began school on July 21st to give us a couple weeks to get into the groove of things before Baby C joined us for five weeks.

Little Bug enjoyed doing her Preschool Calendar Notebook. Sweet Pea would join in with this some days. We started learning about the Human Body (5 senses) and read many books that we checked out from the library. Little Bug had a dentist appointment in August so we checked out some books about going to the dentist. Little Bug’s Read Aloud during this time was Little House on the Prairie. One day while I was reading she got out a piece of paper and her markers and drew a picture of the Ingalls family!

We got a good start into her Horizons math. Little Bug enjoys the lessons and each lesson is the perfect length for her attention span. We also got a good start on her All About Reading Level 1. We completed two lessons, taking about 3 days to complete each lesson. Breaking it up like this helped to keep the lessons short and sweet! Grams printed off handwriting sheets for Little Bug to practice writing her letters. I decided Handwriting Without Tears Kindergarten was not the best fit for Little Bug at this time. These worksheets give her more room for error without making her feel like she is making a mistake!

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The first week of August was spent on vacation in the mountains. We received the call about Sarge on August 5th. From then until August 10th I was pretty much consume with figuring out what was going to happen to this baby so we didn’t accomplish much school during that time.

August 18th was our official First Day of School and the week that we were going to start our full load! The very next day is when we learned there was a real possibility that this mother was going to choose us to parent Sarge. So, August 18th was the first and last day for a long while of our formal homeschool.

However, Grams and Gramps did a phenomenal job of giving the girls learning experiences while we were with Sarge in the NICU. Mama would send me pictures and I saved them so I could post them to the homeschool blog!

Beginning with the top left picture here is what they did: played an addition/subtraction board game, played a letter sound game, washed up brother’s bed using essential oils, built with the connect cubes, practiced cutting, read chapter books and cooked with Grams.

The girls also got to learn through real life experiences including: choosing Sarge’s stuffed toy for monthly pictures, attending a Brazilian church service, playing with Gramps at the Ronald McDonald house, observing the emergency helicopter land on the hospital roof, watching a crane working from the 11th story of the hospital and going to Babies R Us to make my baby registry with Grams.

Going into a NICU was a huge learning experience! Little Bug was FULL of questions for the nurses. How many Kindergarteners can say they have been in a NICU? While of course we would rather Sarge have not needed the NICU, might as well take advantage of the learning experiences for big sisters!

The first week of October we started back with my original homeschool plans!

To see our Curriculum for the 2014-2015 year, click here.

- Elaine