Sickness

The month of April started off rough with sickness. It started with me when I came down with the flu on March 31st. I was pretty much out of it for 2-3 days and then it took me a full 2 weeks to regain my full energy! I was napping most every day along with the kids just to make it through the day. Then, April 4th Sweet Pea started running a high fever. The next morning she was diagnosed with strep throat. Less than a week later, on Sunday, April 9th, Little Bug came home from church and wasn’t acting herself and she said she had a headache and her legs ached. I felt her and she was burning up. The next day she tested positive for flu! The nurse said she had picked it up 2-3 days before, so I don’t think she caught it from me. By mid-April I was OVER sickness and ready to see everyone well! That was a rough start to April. We were able to make up our school work because I didn’t want to push our school year into June.

The pics below are (left) my arsenal of essential oils. I was never officially diagnosed with flu but the nurse who tested Little Bug said I most likely had the flu as well based off my symptoms. The top right picture is of Little Bug at my parents’ house. When she tested positive for flu she went there to hopefully keep the other three children from catching the flu. (It worked.) That picture is of her ironing something when she and Grams were crafting. The bottom right picture is of Sweet Pea the night before she was diagnosed with strep.

I am so thankful we are all well now and April is over!

Bible

We finished reading the book of Genesis in the Bible! The week of Easter we got out our Resurrection Eggs, which is always a favorite at Easter time! Now we are finishing up God’s Names.

Classical Conversations

Unfortunately, we had to miss our last community day due to sickness, but we were all well by the following week and were able to participate in our Field Day! I cannot believe we have already completed Cycle 1 & 2! Cycle 3 will be here before we know it. I love these break months we have (May to mid-August) where we have time to review the previous memory work and also focus on other things. It brings a very nice balance to our homeschool!

Language Arts & Math

Little Bug has nearly completed All About Spelling Level 1! We have just a couple more lessons to go. I love AAS’s method of teaching the spelling rules and then having the child apply them through various activities.

We are continuing to work through First Language Lessons Level 1. It starts by teaching all about nouns. I use CC’s definition of a noun while teaching these lessons to Little Bug because that is what she will need to know for Essentials. These lessons are short and sweet…that is the best way to describe them. This means they are a perfect addition to Little Bug’s Language Art studies at this time.

Little Bug is doing so well with her copywork. There are days where she takes better care to copy exactly and I am hoping as time goes on she will continue to improve in these skills. So far she is copying Bible verses and poems from First Language Lessons.

Kindergarten

Sweet Pea is ready to move on to the next level of academics and I am so excited to go there with her very soon! In the meantime, she continues to work through CLE’s Kindergarten II. I don’t have her do every single page of every single lesson. I only have her do what I know will benefit her moving forward. CLE Kindergarten II is such a strong program in preparing children to learn to read! Sweet Pea started it already knowing her letters and letter sounds, but I will definitely keep this curriculum in mind for my little ones in the future. She enjoys the little crafts throughout the lessons. You can see the elephant she made in the picture below.

Sweet Pea finished A Reason for Handwriting K and she will start it over again next school year. It is such a good book for handwriting practice. This summer I need to have her continue to do activities that will strengthen those fine motor skills so she can do even better on ARFH next time!

She is zooming through Horizons K Math. I think she will be able to finish the first book by the end of this school year and then she will begin CLE Math Level 100 from the very beginning!

Sarge

Sarge continues to have his 60 minutes of room time (while we are doing the bulk of our school work) and then he joins us for the last half hour or so and does “Table Time”. Lately, his interest has been doodling in our dry eraser handwriting books. Whatever keeps him happy is my motto so we can finish our school work. (This year we’ve been able to get everything done in the morning, but next year we will have to split our school time into a morning and afternoon session.)

Sarge is in speech therapy and is making progress with his speech. We work with him at home as well. I bought several Usborne books recently to help him learn new words. He LOVES them. One of the books is First Hundred Words in English. We go through the pages, point at the pictures and say the words. I have also started reading our toddler Bible to Sarge in the morning before his room time. He knows “Bible first” and then we read books together!

Passion Play

We went to see the Passion Play again this Easter! We look forward to this every year. I look forward to the day when all the children are old enough to attend!

This school year is winding down with only about a month left of this school year! We take the month of June off every year, however, I do think we will continue on with math so Little Bug continues to work through Level 100 through the summer. She is naturally a reading machine so I don’t worry about not doing any formal LA for the month of June. I have a lot of planning and prepping I need to do in the month of June for next year’s Cycle 3 and it is good for the kids to have even more time to enjoy the great outdoors!

- Elaine