We have completed the first three weeks of school and it is barely August! Here is what we were up to the first 3 weeks of school!

Language Arts

We were able to pick right back up with All About Reading Level 1 after taking the first week to review the first 14 lessons we had completed last year. We will keep plugging along. With 49 lessons total, these lessons will probably last us through the end of this year. There is no rush to push Little Bug through these lessons. We take the Fluency Practice pages slowly. That is the only part of this curriculum that Little Bug doesn’t particularly like. We are aiming for completing one lesson per week. Little Bug completed the first 10 lessons of A Reason for Handwriting K. My goal with this is to teach Little Bug the proper way to form her letters. She tells me she already knows how to write most of the letters and I don’t make a big deal over showing her exactly how to form the letters the way ARFH teaches if she’s doing a good job of writing the letters “her way”. You have to pick and choose your battles with a child like Little Bug. When I do show her how to form the letters, she does like The Tree House and seeing how the letters fit on the tree house (the method ARFH uses to teach how to form the letters). Little Bug is finishing up Go for the Code, the last book in the Explode the Code Primer series and then she will begin Book 1.

Sweet Pea started All About Reading Pre-Level and she is loving it! I was a little nervous about getting through two levels of AAR every day, but it takes about 20-30 minutes to complete a Pre-level lesson, which is perfect for our schedule. The first week I planned one lesson for two days but I realized we could easily do a lesson a day. The crafts are just enough for Sweet Pea, the games are so engaging and Sweet Pea loves Ziggy! Sweet Pea does Measured Mom handwriting pages. She also practices writing letters by using manipulatives that don’t require paper and pencil. I encourage this kind of practice for preschool, but The Measured Mom’s preschool handwriting pages are excellent for paper and pencil practice.

Math

We got right back into Horizon’s Math K and then by the time we hit lesson 109 I could tell something was off. When I realized Little Bug didn’t know her basic addition facts by memory I decided we needed to focus on learning basic facts before moving forward in Horizons Math K. We spent the last week of July memorizing the 0 and 1’s addition facts. By the end of the week Little Bug was saying them all in 59 seconds instead of her first time of 1:11! Little Bug did several activities that focused on learning basic math facts. Every day I had her work on Ways To Make 6. Monday and Tuesday she did this activity with help and then Wednesday and Friday she completed it all on her own. Domino Addition was very effective and I think I will make this a weekly activity she does for more exposure to the basic facts.

Sweet Pea’s math time was filled with fun math games and activities that usually both girls participated in. One game they especially enjoyed was Number Hunt. I wrote the numbers 1-20 on popsicle sticks, hid the popsicle sticks around the house and had the girls find all of them and then put them in order by sticking them in a roll of play-doh! Another game they enjoyed was Roll and Stack. They would roll a die and then stack that number of pennies to see who could make the tallest tower before it came crashing down. We did the Summer Roll and Cover page which required the girls to roll two dice, add the numbers and dot the number on the page. Sweet Pea was excited when I asked her if she wanted to work in her sister’s math book from last year. At Little Bug’s school that she attended from January to May, she completed the last half of BJU K5 math. The first half of the curriculum was sent home, unused, at the end of the year. Sweet Pea was excited to have a math book just like her sister has one. A math curriculum for preschool is totally unnecessary, but we have this and as long as Sweet Pea is interested and having fun with it, she can work through the lessons. We’ve done the first 5 lessons about shapes!

Sonlight

My goal with Sonlight was to make especially history and geography come alive and be relevant for my children. We have completed the first five weeks of Sonlight P4/5. When we read Usborne’s Stories Around the World, we pull out our scrunch map (coolest map ever!) and find where our story is taking place. The girls love the Uncle Wiggly Storybook and always ask for another. I don’t follow the lesson plans as written in the Instructional Guide. We usually read the week’s lessons for each book in one sitting. It works better for the girls this way. Sonlight is definitely an “extra” in our simple homeschool but it’s a good extra since it is just reading books! I love transitioning to our rest time in the afternoon by reading Sonlight books! The Bible we are reading right now is the one from Sonlight P4/5, 101 Favorite Stories from the Bible.

Classical Conversations

Our weekly community meetings do not start until mid-August. Since I bought the Cycle 1 CDs at the Homeschool Convention in May, we’ve been listening to the Timeline CD often! One morning Little Bug just started singing the Timeline song without the CD playing! I was amazed and became even more exciting about starting CC. I am keeping it simple for our first year. We will mostly listen to Cycle 1 CDs for our Memory Work this year and I’ve been told to be amazed at how much the girls will pick up just from that.

Other Highlights!

Our formal learning takes place over 1-2 hours during the day. The rest of our time is filled with playing, Play-Doh, exploring the great outdoors and reading good books. Uncle is reading Little Bug Chronicles of Narnia. This is another advantage of homeschooling. My children have time for doing what children do best: playing!

- Elaine