Bible

We’ve been reading Genesis straight from the NIV Adventure Bible. I read one chapter each morning. We’ve had some wonderful discussions. There is nothing sweeter than having the privilege of being able to open the Word of God every morning with my daughters to begin our school day. We read the chapter and discuss what we can learn about God, mankind and sin from that chapter. Some mornings our Bible time has inched it’s way into school time but that is the beauty of homeschool. I don’t have to stop at a certain time to move on. We can open the Word of God and stay there as long as the girls’ attention is there. We also daily work on memorizing our monthly Bible verse.

Language Arts

Little Bug is plugging away in All About Spelling Level 1. She is halfway through Level 1 and I already have Level 2 ready to go. I love the way AAS teaches spelling! I am not a natural speller. It has been proven that random spelling lists and a weekly test do not improve spelling. Learning spelling rules and knowing how to spell the individual sounds in words improves spelling skills and this is the way AAS teaches children to spell! I have a feeling I am going to improve my own spelling skills simply by teaching AAS to my children!

Little Bug is also halfway through A Reason for Handwriting K for the second time. She knows how to form all her letters. It is just a matter of whether she wants to write neatly, or not. Going through ARFH K a second time has been good, extra practice for her.

This month, for Copywork, Little Bug started writing the Bible verses on the line below where I wrote the verse. Previously, she had been tracing over what I wrote. In the next couple of months (before the end of this school year), I want to transition her to true Copywork where she will have a text and copy it on to her own paper.

Sweet Pea only has about a month left of Confession of a Homeschooler’s K4/5 Kinder Curriculum. She is also working through A Reason for Handwriting K. Sweet Pea was wanting more so I decided to order Christian Light Education’s Kindergarten II curriculum. This curriculum covers language arts and math through a variety of interactive worksheet activities. She completed two of the 10 books this month!

Math

We made a big change in math this month by switching math curriculums! At the end of January, Little Bug finished the first book of Horizons Math 1. As I looked ahead to the second book, I could tell the presentation of Horizon’s math was no longer going to be best for Little Bug. When I looked at samples of Christian Light Education’s math curriculum I knew the straight-forward, no fluff approach to math was exactly where we needed to go. Plus, CLE has math fact flashcards and drills built into the curriculum for daily practice! This is something that was missing in Horizons and is something I always had to compensate for. The Teacher’s Guide for CLE Math is phenomenal. We have completed 20 CLE math lessons and we both agree that we enjoy CLE Math!

Sweet Pea has been working on learning some basic math facts using K4/5 Kinder’s Add It math game! She learned the +1’s, +2’s and +3’s this month. She has also been working on skip counting. By the end of this month, I could tell she was wanting more, so I asked her if she wanted to start Horizons Math K. She was so excited and did the first 20 pages of the book the first week of March. (I will talk more about this in March’s Homeschool Highlights post.)

Classical Conversations

We are on the last 6 weeks of our second year of Classical Conversations! I love how CC naturally breaks up our school year. We begin our school year in mid-July since we school year round. So, we get 6 weeks of school in before CC starts. Then, we do the first 6 weeks of CC which brings us to October and our first break week. I use that break week to review the first 6 weeks of Memory Work with the girls. The second 6 weeks of CC takes us to mid-November when we break for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. That break is nice because we can spend time reviewing the first half of the year’s Memory Work! Also, if there is a special project or activity I wanted to do with the girls that we didn’t get to, the break week is the perfect time to fit it in. (This year we didn’t do that because we were adopting a baby!) The third 6 weeks of CC begins in January after the holiday break and takes us through mid-February when we have another break week. Again, we use that time to review the previous 6 weeks of Memory Work and catch up on any activities we didn’t get to. Then, the final 6 weeks of the year is split with a Spring Break week halfway through the final 6 weeks. We finish up the CC school year in mid-April, which means we still will have about 5-6 weeks left of the school year before our break month in June! We use that time to review all of the Memory Work learned that year and we also use the time in our schedule for CC Review to add something to our school routine that we don’t normally do (like Blob Mapping)! I have naturally fallen into a 6-week routine of planning for school, evaluating each subject for each child and making sure we are still headed in the right direction. Every 6 weeks, I also go through completed work to save several pieces to go in their Portfolios. CC has brought an unexpected order to every aspect of our homeschool!

In the picture below, on the left, the girls are reviewing the past 6 weeks of Memory Work during our February break week. I would ask a question and for every correct response they got to choose another part for their Mr. Potato Heads! The picture on the top is Little Bug intently working on her art work in her CC class. The picture below is Sweet Pea giving her weekly presentation to her class.

We absolutely LOVE Classical Conversations and I cannot wait to start planning for Cycle 3 soon! I’ve been looking forward to Cycle 3 since we started CC at Cycle 1! Cycle 3 is all about American History and Geography. That is going to be lots of fun to study with the girls!

Valentine’s Day

The girls had fun making Valentine Cards for their friends at Classical Conversations. They used pink and purple paper and stickers to create their cards. We bought pencils to attach to the cards.

Table Time

Homeschooling two children with a 2-year-old underfoot definitely has it’s unique challenges! One strategy I use after Sarge has completed his daily 1 hour Room Time (a vital part of our homeschool morning when Sarge plays independently in his bedroom) is Table Time! Sarge knows when he leaves his room it is time to come sit at the table. There are some days he is not in the mood for Table Time, but for the most part, this works well in buying me time to finish up school with the girls without a toddler wreaking havoc on everyone’s work! Sarge does puzzles (this mostly consists of taking the pieces and playing with them), plays with his cars and plastic animals (his favorite toys), puts animal and ABC magnets on the cookie sheet, colors and sometimes he just sits and somewhat participates in what we are doing! If we are doing CC Review, he loves to listen to the songs!

Drawing

Little Bug is quite the artist of the family! Next year, I hope to look into more ways she can create and do art during our normal school routines, but she is always finding ways to be creative. The large elephant was already on this handwriting sheet that she colored but she drew the baby elephant free-hand by looking at the big elephant and copying it! Then one day during rest time (when Little Bug often chooses to spend her time being creative) she came to me and showed me a picture of “Mona Lisa” that she had drawn. She saw the real Mona Lisa in our Usborne Art book and copied it!

We have another 2.5 months left to this school year and then we will be headed into our 5th year of homeschooling! After next year, I will officially be a homeschool mom longer than I was a public school teacher!

- Elaine