It’s time to record another month of learning on the blog! This has been a wonderful month filled with lots of great moments. These are the days I am going to miss tremendously one day. While there are challenges and days that I would rather erase from our memories when someone wakes up a Mr. or Ms. Grumpypants, I know these days are fleeting and I want to enjoy them and savor them…and capture precious moments and memories that I can look back on when they are all teenagers or…{snif, snif}…out of the nest.

Bible

We’ve been reading through God’s Names during October and I absolutely LOVE this little book. We have learned 8 names of God and with each name of God that I teach my girls I am teaching them about the character of God which is so powerful. I am thankful for another wonderful tool to use to help hide the Word of God and His Truths in the hearts of my children. At the end of the week, they make a poster with the names of God we learned that week, their meanings and then they draw an illustration to go with the names.

Classical Conversations

At the end of October, we have completed 9 weeks of Cycle 2! We are learning about the solar system in Science! This is a great topic to dig a little deeper on because children are naturally interested in learning about outer space. We’ve read lots of great books and the girls have enjoyed several projects about the sun, constellations and the planets.

I was wanting a little something to help us learn a little bit more about our History Sentences. A friend recommended the Story of the World CDs to me so I bought Volume 2 which covers The Middle Ages. When I purchased these CDs I had no idea Jim Weiss is the storyteller on these CDs. We LOVE Jim Weiss stories so the girls immediately took to the Story of the World and it has been so awesome to see their reactions when they hear words in the stories from our Memory Work! I typically serve lunch, we pray and then I turn on Story of the World and they listen while they eat. It has been the perfect addition to our CC History sentences!

Language Arts

Little Bug clearly became bored this month with All About Reading Level 2 lessons! So I’ve tweaked how we do the lessons. I don’t go through the lessons word-for-word like we used to and just hit the highlights (phonics rule) and then Little Bug does the activity sheet, reads the practice words (flashcards) and the fluency sheets. She still very much enjoys the AAR readers so we do those lessons in full so she can read the stories.

Since we are now breezing through AAR and it isn’t a challenge for Little Bug anymore, we started Spelling this month! I am, of course, using All About Spelling Level 1! Little Bug was excited to start spelling and…quite frankly, so am I! I am a horrible speller and there are rumors out there that AAS can help adults learn to spell better too. I hope it’s true. We are alternating between AAR and AAS and not doing both in one day.

Little Bug continues to be an avid reader. One day she did not want to put her book down even while eating! She eventually did but then after the meal, her nose was right back in the book. The girl loves to read and I love to see her reading. Makes my heart soar to know I taught my girl to read! It is a skill she will use for basically everything she will ever need to do in this life: especially read God’s Word!

I am researching literature studies to begin with Little Bug soon. She will keep doing Explode the Code for daily phonics practice, but her reading skills are high enough now that we can begin literature studies. I am very excited about that!

Read Aloud

We enjoy our Read Aloud time right before rest time each day. Sarge is already down for his nap (because you can forget Read Alouds with a 2 year old present!) and we all sit in the living room together and enjoy a good story. We’ve been reading the Little House series and we’ve read up to By the Shores of Silver Lake. I decided to take a break from the Little House books and we’ve picked up Because of Winn-Dixie. The girls were resistant to taking a break from the Little House books, but a chapter into Because of Winn-Dixie and they were both pulled into the story! Little Bug always wants to keep reading our Read Alouds on her own so I had to make a rule that she can read any book in the house except our Read Aloud book! It’s like the forbidden fruit from the tree in the Garden of Eden…

Handwriting

We are just about finished with Handwriting Without Tears! After this, my main goal with Little Bug is going to be to introduce copywork to her. I have some ideas about how I am going to do this.

Sweet Pea will move into A Reason for Handwriting K for more letter formation practice. I bought another copy of this book for Little Bug to do too and I think I will have her do it along with copywork because it will literally take her under 5 minutes to complete daily and the extra practice won't hurt!

Math

Little Bug is plugging away in Horizons Math 1. It is still basically a review from Horizons K and we are 50+ lessons in. I don’t mind at all because Little Bug needs review and more practice in basic math skills. Every 10 lessons there is a test and Little Bug’s test average is a 98% for the 5 tests she has taken so far!

This month, I also started Timed Tests (for addition and subtraction facts) with her. She did her Doubles facts (25 problems) in 1:06! I want both of my girls to have a rock solid foundation in basic addition and subtraction because that will help them tremendously once they get in to higher math like Algebra and Trigonometry in middle and high school.

Kindergarten

Sweet Pea is working through Confessions of a Homeschooler’s K4/5 Kindergarten Curriculum and excelling in it. The phonics worksheets and activities have been the perfect intro to reading for her. By the New Year (January), we should be just about finished with the K4/5 Kinder curriculum and the friend who is borrowing our AAR Level 1 should be finished with it and then Sweet Pea will begin a formal phonics program to learn to read. She is excited about that but is already sounding out most CVC words pretty well.

Sweet Pea is a little math whiz. She has just about completed the half of BJU K5 Math that Little Bug didn’t use her Kinder year and I am trying to decide what she will do next. I don’t want to start Horizons K with her until her handwriting improves and she is closer to 6 years old. This month, with BJU K5 Math, we’ve worked on counting, money (penny and dime), measurement and addition. We’ve played some money games from Measured Mom and The Big Numbers Song (for counting and number recognition) is always a big hit in our home! Sarge enjoys watching it too!

On Fridays, we are working through an Apple Unit I put together using books about apples we have in our home library and printables from This Reading Mama and Mama's Learning Corner! Apple Farmer Annie is one of our favorites in the fall basket. Apple Fractions is the new book I added to the basket this year! In the picture below, Sweet Pea is working on a rhyming activity and a patterns activity.

I noticed Sweet Pea needed to work on her coloring skills so I printed some Fall coloring pages from Mama's Learning Corner. We all sat down to color at the kitchen table and Sweet Pea worked so hard to stay in the lines! (The color page shown here in the picture is mine.)

Sarge

Little Sarge is definitely a 2-year-old and that is very obvious when we are trying to do our school work! For the most part, he isn’t that difficult - I just have to be strategic and do certain things when I know he will be occupied in Room Time or nap time!

He does join us at the kitchen table at times and that works well. He loves to scribble with a pencil on paper while we do handwriting at the table. When we were working on our science project about the sun, I drew a yellow circle on his paper and gave him a yellow and orange crayon to color his sun! He enjoyed that. He always wants to do everything his sisters are doing so if they are doing school, he wants to be doing something with them too.

The very beginning of our day I spend one-on-one with Sarge in his bedroom reading him books. He LOVES this time of day as much as I do! I tell him it is time to go read books and he runs to his bedroom where he immediately walks over to his pack n play (where he does Room Time right after I read to him) and he wants to get all his cars out. Then he lines them up and usually rolls them over books while I read to him! Reading to my children is always a top priority for me as their mother and teacher!

Trip to the Mountains

We took our annual trip to the mountains in early October and while there, we took the children to a nature preserve zoo. It was Sarge’s first time going to a zoo. We decided to let him have the freedom of walking (instead of being in the stroller) and he did an excellent job of staying with us! It was a beautiful day!

Apple Farm

We also took the girls to an Apple Farm! This is something I have always wanted to do but apples don’t grow in our neck of the woods. We went about 45 minutes from where we were in the mountains to this apple farm and had a blast picking apples right off the trees! The girls also got to see a real pumpkin patch with pumpkins still on the vine. It was drizzling rain the entire time we were there but that did not dampen our fun. We even bought pumpkin and apple cider donuts as a treat and left with a bushel of apples for $25! I think this will be a new tradition for our fall trip to the mountains. (Sarge did not go and stayed with my parents while we took the girls because we discovered on this trip that Sarge gets car sick in the mountains. Next year, once I have hopefully discovered the best way to manage his carsickness, he will be able to go, too!)

Pumpkin Patch

In mid-October we took our annual trip to the local pumpkin patch for our annual family picture at the pumpkin patch. I love looking back at these pictures through the years and seeing how our family has grown and changed.

Blessing Bags

We are trying to be intentional about teaching our children about service to others. Dave had the idea of making “Blessing Bags” for homeless men and women we see in the city. We went to the store and purchased items like toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, granola bars, etc and placed the items in a gallon ziplock bag. We printed Proverbs 3:5-6 and Little Bug decorated the paper and wrote “God loves you and so do we” and then it was placed in each zip lock. We made 5 bags and put some in each of our cars so we can be ready to hand them out when we come across a homeless person.

We’ve completed 15 weeks of school. We have three more weeks until CC breaks for the holidays. We use that break time to review the first 12 weeks of Memory Work before heading into the final 12 weeks of Cycle 2. It is hard to believe the first semester is over half way complete. I am very satisfied with the progress I see my children making academically. The work of their hearts is not so clearly seen and measured, but I can only pray God is taking my efforts and my failures and making something beautiful from that too.

- Elaine