Language Arts

This was a HUGE month for reading progress for Little Bug!! It was so exciting to watch it all unfold right before my eyes. It reminded me again why we have chosen to homeschool. I taught my daughter to read and I was the one who witnessed her moment when it all came together and clicked in her little mind! At the beginning of the month, Little Bug asked me if we could try to find a “real” book that she could read. I had some Step into Reading books on the shelf just waiting for such a moment. Little Bug found Hot Dog and sat down to read it. She read it with ease and was so proud of herself!

Then, on the night of November 23rd, I was putting Sarge to bed. I give him his milk in his bedroom and then we walk down the hall towards the bathroom and past the living room where Dave is reading to the girls before bedtime. Except on this night, it wasn’t Dave reading – it was Little Bug!! And she was reading a REAL book. A book I had NO CLUE she could read. It was Usborne’s Look Inside Mummies and Pyramids book! She was reading words I was shocked she could read. In that instant I knew it had happened: reading was clicking in her little mind and we had turned a corner!!!

Sure, I taught my kid to read, but I give ALL credit to the wonderful program All About Reading. It has taken us step-by-step in this process and brought Little Bug’s reading skills to where they are today. It is such an orderly, thorough program. I have loved using it to teach Little Bug and Little Bug has enjoyed all the multi-sensory activities included in each lesson. At the end of November, we are on Lesson 30. There are 19 lessons to go. We will continue to work through the lessons at Little Bug’s pace, as we have done since Lesson 1. I don’t move forward until I feel she has completely mastered the concepts of the previous lessons. We’ve repeated lessons or activities many times. This is another thing that reminds me why I homeschool. I get to move at my child’s pace throughout this curriculum. We will keep plugging along until we complete all 49 lessons in Level 1 and then we will purchase and move on to Level 2!

Little Bug is nearly finished with A Reason for Handwriting K! I am thinking about where we are going next with handwriting. I am leaning towards Little Bug doing copywork instead of the next book in the handwriting curriculum.

I said Sweet Pea had completed the Capital letter lessons of All About Reading Pre-Level but we had not done Letter Z! At the beginning of November, we did the Letter Z lesson and then we spent the rest of November doing thematic units including: Fall, Pumpkins, Apples, Thanksgiving Then & Thanksgiving Now. These are probably my favorite preschool lessons to teach. I enjoyed teaching them to Little Bug and now Sweet Pea! In a few years, I will get to teach them again to Sarge!

Math

We have made it to the end of Addition Math Facts! Just before Thanksgiving we started learning “The Last 8 Facts”, which don’t have any kind of pattern to memorize by. I love the way Saxon Math 1 teaches Addition Math Facts. This is also a very orderly, thorough curriculum. We have now learned: Doubles, Doubles Plus 1, Plus Zero, Plus 1, Even Numbers Plus 2, Odd Numbers Plus 2, Sums of 10, Adding 9 to a Number and The Last 8 Facts!

I really wanted to find an app or a game that had the math facts categorized this way allowing me to choose a particular set for Little Bug to practice or even letting me chose multiple sets for her to practice. I could find no such resource. So, what did I do? I asked her Daddy to create a game for her, of course! (He is a computer programmer.) “Math Factory”, created by Daddy, has been a HUGE help to ME in getting Little Bug to drill her math facts in a fun way. It is the perfect complement to Saxon Math 1 Addition facts lessons!

Most of Sweet Pea’s math activities this month were included in her Fall/Thanksgiving units, but we did play Halloween Roll & Cover a few days after Halloween!

Classical Conversations

We are on break from Classical Conversations through the New Year but we are still reviewing and digging deeper into our Memory Work from Week’s 1-12. I’ve focused on digging deeper mainly with the Science Memory Work. I hosted an Usborne books party in late October and earned $200 of FREE books. I stocked our home library with Usborne books that have Memory Work from all 3 cycles! We have enjoyed using these books to dig deeper into some of our Science Memory Work from Weeks 1-12.

On Friday the girls have an opportunity to put more stars on their CC charts. They get 1 star for every piece of Memory Work they know by heart. I am simply amazed at how many stars are on each of their charts!

Sonlight

I forgot to mention this last month, but last month I decided to not continue reading Sonlight books by the Instructor’s Guide as we had been doing since the beginning of our school year. I think Sonlight is a fabulous homeschool program and the reason we stopped is not because I dislike Sonlight. I know there are many people who combine CC with Sonlight and it makes for a perfect homeschool for them. At this stage in our homeschool, doing both was overkill. Simple is my motto nowadays! I didn’t want to be learning about different science topics with Sonlight and CC, at the same time! In the future, I think Sonlight will be an excellent resource for me to use to find good books that match our CC Memory Work. The Read Aloud lists are excellent and it wouldn’t be difficult to find titles we are interested in reading from the library, rather than spending all that money on a complete Core. I posted our Sonlight P4/5 on a used curriculum site and immediately had 4 people interested in buying!

Fine Arts

During the first weeks of Classical Conversations the Fine Arts portion of Community Day is all about OiLs. We learned to draw using circles, lines, dots, angles and curvy lines. I found a tutorial on How to Draw a Scarecrow. I drew each step on the dry erase board while Little Bug and Sweet Pea copied what I was drawing onto their own paper. After we drew the scarecrow, they personalized their scarecrows to their own personalities, which I just loved! We had so much fun with this activity and I was so impressed with how well they both did at drawing their scarecrow! We read The Little Scarecrow Boy before drawing.

We enjoyed the Scarecrow so much we decided to Draw a Turkey during Thanksgiving Week! Uncle joined us! We didn’t do the painting part of this tutorial because I wanted to keep things to the OiLs. Again, their personalities shine through their turkeys! Before drawing we read one of our favorite Thanksgiving books, A Turkey for Thanksgiving!

Field Trip

We went to another Nature Preserve area and enjoyed a nice walk along the nature trail with some CC friends and friends from our church. The weather could not have been more perfect! There were clear, blue skies and the temperature was absolutely perfection. We went on a Nature Scavenger Hunt. We all printed a copy of this for each of our children and they had a wonderful time finding and checking off things as they saw them on our nature walk.

Thanksgiving Break

Thanksgiving Day was spent with my family. We had a wonderful day full of wonderful food and a good time around the table together. It was Sarge’s first Thanksgiving Feast and his stomach was so big at the end of that meal. He loves to eat! Little Bug made “Grandma Rolls” with Grams. This is special because I was the first to make “Grandma Rolls” as a little girl with my Grandma who passed away when I was 15. It was so special to me to see my daughter doing this with her grandma as I had done with my grandma as a child!

The Friday after Thanksgiving we went to get a Christmas Tree! Thanksgiving night I took down all the Fall décor and put up all the Christmas décor minus the Christmas Tree! No time to waste when Thanksgiving is on November 26th! The girls got to put the balls on the Tree before they went to bed. I also let them pick 3 ornaments to put on. They get to decorate the small artificial tree in the Homeschool room all by themselves! I went through my Christmas décor this year and gave away a lot of it so I could go buy some new things at Michael’s on Black Friday. I found some cute, fun stuff I knew the girls would love and I got it all at least 50% off!

It is hard to believe another calendar year is almost over! This year flew by…as they all seem to do lately. I was looking back at pictures from when the girls were 3 and 1. It’s a phase of motherhood and our family that is just memories now. That stage has passed. That 3 and 1 year old are now six and four and they have a 1 year old brother! I want to keep them this age forever, but at the same time, I know a new stage awaits once we no longer have babies, toddler and preschoolers. I am not ready for that stage to come quite yet and I am thankful my children are little still. One day, sooner than I realize, I will look back at this post and another stage will have vanished. But, not today. Not this season. They are small and with their smallness comes things I certainly won’t miss (haha) but there is much I will miss.

I had planned to take about 2 weeks off in December, but after just 2 days of no school for the Thanksgiving Break, by Saturday it was obvious these kids need the structure of school time. It is just a part of their routine. A day or two off isn’t so bad, but beyond that and….we just need school time! So, Dave and I talked and decided I won’t schedule 2 weeks off in December. We will have plenty of time for some fun Christmas activities that we can call school!

- Elaine