Language Arts

The big news this month was that Little Bug completed All About Reading Level 1 on March 18th! This was a huge accomplishment for Little Bug. We were so proud of her and she was so proud of herself. She wanted a picture of her holding all the Word Cards she can read. I gave us a week off AAR but during that week Little Bug was itching to start Level 2! If that isn’t the sign of a fantastic phonics program, I don’t know what is! The last week of March, we did begin Level 2 and when Little Bug placed that first sticker on her Progress Chart for completing Lesson 1, she was one happy little girl. I am forever grateful to have found All About Reading! Phonics is fun…for both student and teacher!

Sweet Pea is nearly finished with the lowercase letters of the alphabet in All About Reading Pre-Level. Ziggy remains a favorite and she (the girls are convinced Ziggy is a girl!) joins our homeschool every day. We enjoy the poetry book for each lowercase letter and the activities and games continue to be so simple yet so rich in preparing Sweet Pea to learn to read in the future. Sometimes Sweet Pea gets her sister to help her with the alphabet pages because coloring and crafting isn’t Sweet Pea’s favorite thing to do.

Independent Work

Little Bug does her Independent Work from 2-2:30pm. She has finished Explode the Code Book 2 and has started Book 3 now! I also give her handwriting practice pages that I can easily print off on the computer. She is also working on Draw Write Now Book 1. She chooses one picture to draw and 2 sentences to copy onto this paper that has a place for drawing and writing. Little Bug also reviews her math facts through Fact Sheets (from Saxon Math 1) and by drilling her addition and subtraction facts.

Sweet Pea continues to practice handwriting and do various language arts and math activities during her Independent Work time.

Math

Little Bug is nearly finished with Horizons K Math! We will finish in May. We’ve been focusing on the concepts of: place value, money and time. Every day I have Little Bug do one of these to practice counting money. We use our base ten blocks or straws to help visualize place value. This clock has been awesome to help Little Bug learn time to the hour, half hour and quarter hour.

Classical Conversations

Every school day begins with a Bible story and CC Memory Work review! It is a wonderful way to begin our day! We are almost finished with The Beginner’s Bible. I don’t feel the need to plan an activity or craft for every piece of memory work because I believe that the memory work is enough in the Foundations stage of learning. If I find something fun and easy to prepare, I will do it with the girls. We colored the Ocean Zones one week. Another week the girls made a cool craft about the earth’s layers during science time at Community Day. We also continued to enjoy reviewing our Memory Work by playing these simple games. Simple works. My girls know more Memory Work than I ever thought possible at ages 6 and 4.

Art

We discovered Art for Kids Hub and the girls drew a volcano to go with our science Memory Work. The guy on the video gives step-by-step instructions on how to draw!

Field Trip

We attended a Field Trip with our CC Community to a local rice farm! It was very interesting to learn about how they harvest their rice. We got to take home a bag of rice and we ate it with dinner! Gramps went with us and Grams kept Sarge so he could get his morning nap in.

Easter Eggs

My mom has dyed Easter Eggs with my kids since Little Bug’s first Easter when she was about 10-11 months old! It’s gotten to be a pretty lively event with the 2 girls over the past several years, but this year my mom was extremely organized in everything and it was a pleasant experience for all! She even had plastic eggs in a bowl for Sarge to play with and he happily sat in his high chair for the longest time playing with them while the girls dyed their eggs! Grams also had the Resurrection Eggs out to do with the girls. They love those. We had already done it several times at home that week during our Bible time in the morning.

Passion Play

We attended a Passion Play for the 3rd year in a row. The girls enjoy going to the village town set up before the play begins where they can experience life in Bible times. They got to kneed dough, make a bracelet with beads, visit a stinky fish market and watch basket weavers making a basket. The play lasts 2 hours and they are glued to the performance. I especially enjoyed this year’s play because it was a new script that told more of the story beginning with Creation!

I’m late posting this month so we are already a couple weeks into April. We have just about 6-7 weeks left before Summer! I will be posting our Summer plans for school soon!

- Elaine