Language Arts

We are slowly moving through All About Reading Level 1. I don’t want to rush through these lessons; I want to make sure Little Bug is mastering the skills taught. When we hit the Consonant Blend lessons (th, ch and sh) I noticed it was a challenge for Little Bug to read some of the words in the lessons. After we completed Lesson 22, I decided instead of moving forward to Lesson 23, Little Bug needed more practice with these Consonant Blend lessons. We spent another week on those lessons, replaying the games, going over the Practice Words and rereading the stories in the Reader. After camping on those lessons for a while, we moved forward and now, at the end of September we are currently on Lesson 24. Little Bug completed the first Reader this month, reading ALL of the stories!

The Fluency Practice pages also got considerably longer. This is the one part of the program Little Bug really does not like. We take the Fluency Practice pages very slowly, doing them over several days instead of reading them all in one sitting. This is one HUGE reason why we homeschool. I am moving through this curriculum at Little Bug’s pace…and no one else’s!

Little Bug finished the Primer Explode the Code books in mid-September and then started Book 1. She is doing about 1-3 pages per day and, again, we will work through this book at her pace.

Handwriting is going well. Little Bug is still working on the lowercase letters. She will soon finish those lessons and move to the uppercase letters. Sometimes she rushes through her lesson and writes sloppy, so I have her re-do the lesson. Other times, she is very careful and writes her letters beautifully! You never know what you are going to get with Little Bug. She is full of daily surprises.

Sweet Pea is progressing well in All About Reading Pre-Level. We spent many lessons learning about syllables, which is a helpful pre-reading skill. Ziggy is still the highlight of Sweet Pea’s school time. He really makes AAR come alive in the lessons. Without him, the activities wouldn’t be the same! Sweet Pea isn’t big on the craft pages. By this, I mean, she puts way less detail to her crafts than Little Bug would. This is because Sweet Pea isn’t as crafty as her big sister is! Little Bug often asks if she can help Sweet Pea with her craft pages, and Sweet Pea is always willing to have Little Bug help. Sweet Pea loves the Reader story book. She continues to practice her handwriting by doing Measured Mom Preschool handwriting pages. She also enjoys The Measured Mom’s Find the Letter pages.

Both girls are now into me reading aloud chapter books! This is probably one of my favorite things about homeschooling. Twice a day now we typically curl up together and enjoy a couple chapters of our read aloud! We usually read in the middle of our school time in the morning. It puts a nice break between language arts and math. We read again right before rest time/naptime to wind everyone down. Here is the list of Read Alouds we have enjoyed together!

Math

Little Bug is learning her basic math facts! She has learned her Doubles Facts (4+4=8), Plus One Facts (4+1=5), Plus Zero Facts (4+0=4) and is currently learning her Doubles Plus One Facts (4+5=9). We continue to work through the Saxon 1 basic addition fact lessons and I am very pleased with the results. The math fact sheets are perfect for reinforcement of these facts.

Little Bug writes the date on a calendar every day and then records the weather on a graph. This provides us with a great opportunity for calendar, numbers, skip counting and graphing review. I also make my own worksheets every week or so of concepts and skills Little Bug learned with the Horizons K Math. I want to keep those skills sharp while we are taking this little basic math fact detour.

Sweet Pea’s math consists of all games and fun activities with an occasional interactive number worksheet from The Measured Mom thrown in! This month, some of our math games and activities were: Musical Hearts, Dot Dabber and tangram puzzles.

Classical Conversations

We’ve completed 6 weeks of Classical Conversations and I am simply amazed at what my girls are learning. Little Bug especially seems to soak in the content each week. CC has made me realize Little Bug is an auditory learner. We listen to the CD of the Memory Work in the car. One day, I turned the car off just as the CD was saying, “Tell me about the split of the Roman Empire.” The CD was cut off but Little Bug proceeded to say the history sentence, word for word!

The Roman Republic fought the Punic Wars, which were followed by the Pax Romana. In 286AD, the empire divided into Western and Eastern empires until Germanic barbarians defeated the Western Empire, in 476AD.I

I was amazed!!! This was simply from listening to the CD in the car. She had it memorized just like that. Does she understand what that means? No. But she doesn’t have to – yet. She’s just hanging pegs of information in her memory that she will be able to build upon in later years. It’s truly fascinating to see the classical model of education coming alive in our homeschool. And I am just seeing the beginnings of all the beauty of a classical education. I hear, as time goes on, there will be more and more moments where I stand back in amazement at the connections my children make as they continue on this journey.

Besides reviewing the memory work by watching the videos I take in their classes on Community Day and listening the CD in the car, we dive deeper into topics purely based on their interests. In other words, I don’t have weekly activities planned for every piece of Memory Work! We are keeping it very simple – very “stick in the sand”. Week 3 Little Bug became fascinated with the Greek and Roman gods and wanted to learn more about them. She was always careful to tell us that they are FALSE gods. I found some coloring pages of the Greek and Roman gods and printed them off for the girls to color. They couldn’t wait until morning. They had to color some of them before bedtime that night! I also checked out a book from the library about the Greek and Roman gods so Little Bug could hear some specific stories.

Another thing I love about CC is that I am learning right along side my girls! Did I know the names of Greek and Roman gods before Week 3? Nope. I do now though! I also LOVE the geography. I’ve always been fascinated with maps and world travel, so I love that my girls are learning to locate specific areas of the world on a map. Such a lost skill among our society today even though our world has become so “global”. Isn’t that ironic? We want our children to be global, yet in schools we are not teaching geography! Sure, children these days have the Internet at their fingertips to be able to look up a geographical location, but if a child can be reading about a story that takes place in Crete and they are able to paint a mental picture in their mind of where this is in the world – instead of having to “go look it up” – just knowing it is so powerful! I am thankful my children are getting this type of education!

My parents went on a cruise several years ago and one of their stops was Egypt! They bought a book all about Egypt while there and Little Bug has enjoyed looking through it. During her rest time one day, she drew these three pictures: Pharaoh, chariot with horse and 2 pyramids.

Classical Conversations has equally been so good for Sweet Pea. I have been AMAZED at her in class. Sweet Pea’s personality is more reserved and shy. Every week the children are to give a presentation in front of their class. This begins in the 4 year old class! Sweet Pea has done her presentation every week! Pictured here is the week she brought the stuffed alligator from Grams and Gramps’ house. It belonged to my mom’s aunt. Presentations at this age are more like “show and tell”. The children get up and talk for about 1-2 minutes about something they bring to show the class. Prep for these presentations consists of helping them come up with 3 things to say about whatever they are presenting about.

The picture on the right (above) is Sweet Pea’s class during their science experiment. I love that science experiments, art/music and public speaking are a part of CC!

At one year old, the main academic focus I have with my children is to read to them! When Little Bug was a baby, I read to her constantly. With subsequent babies, I find it harder to find time to read to the babies because I have older kids and my attention has to be divided among all the children. I still make reading to my babies top priority. I read to Sarge every day before his afternoon nap for about 15 minutes. I have read this Nursery Rhyme book to my children many, many times. It’s time to read it to Sarge! At this age, when their attention span for books is less than the amount of the time I want to read to them, I grab this book and read the poems and rhymes while they play. This will be a book I will probably read to my grandchildren one day!

Field Trip

We attended our first Field Trip with our CC Community on September 25th! We went to a local university, walked the nature trails, learned a lot about nature, and completed a Scavenger Hunt along the way. We all enjoyed the experience. I plan to write a post just about this Field Trip later, but here are some pictures from that day.

The calendar now says it is Fall and hopefully the weather will soon follow suit! I can’t believe it’s already October and we have now completed 11 weeks of school, thanks to our year-round schedule!

- Elaine