October was full of learning and fun! Here is what we were up to in October!

Language Arts

We completed half of All About Reading Level 3, so we are back to All About Spelling Level 2 for a while. My plan is to alternate these two curriculums throughout the school year.

We also started a Progeny Press Study Guide for Little House on the Prairie. The guide is full of vocabulary activities along with discussion questions. I love the way Progeny Press ties in the Bible to some of the discussion questions! We’ve had lots of meaningful discussions using this guide while reading this classic story.

We continue to work daily on the memorization of CC English Grammar so that it will be down pat when Little Bug is in Essentials. She is doing a fabulous job with this and I am always so amazed at how quickly she memorizes things.

Little Bug continues to be a little reading machine. One night before going to bed she set her doll up with her current book and said, “Haley is lucky because she gets to stay up all night and read!” I am still convinced she loves to read because she was not pressured to read at age five!

Math

The big news this month in Math is that Little Bug has completed Level 1 of Christian Light Education math! She took her last test on October 15th. She also completed the number book and wrote all of her numbers 1-1,000! That almost daily exercise helped tremendously with her number sense.

We took a week off from math and then started Level 2! The first LU of Level 2 was a review of Level 1. We probably could have skipped it since we had just completed Level 1, but we did it and there is now no doubt in my mind that she has mastered every concept taught in Level 1. This is the beauty of homeschooling! There is no such thing as “getting a C or D”. We get all A’s because we don’t move on from something until it is completely mastered. What’s the point of learning material enough to make a passing grade of C? That system is just in place for public education because there isn’t time for all 20-30 students in each class to master everything. When you have a 1 teacher to 1 student ratio with homeschooling, we have time and it is beautiful what my children are able to learn because of that simple fact.

Sweet Pea

Sweet Pea continues to work through Explode the Code Book B where she has handwriting practice and phonics activities. She excels in this book. For language arts, we enjoy a lot of quality literature together. Just like her sister, I am not pushing her to learn to read. It will come in it’s own time and in the meantime we will continue to play with letters and letter sounds.

In math, I am continuing to work on number sense with her. We played Roll & Race Number Sense games. During independent work time, she wrote her numbers 1-30 every day. I also had her count 1-100 nearly every day and point to the numbers on our number chart as she was counting. Through this, she is gaining a better sense of numbers so that she will be ready to start CLE Math Level 1 when she is seven years old.

Sarge

I sensed Sarge had made a mental leap in his development this month. He wanted to be included in “school time”. He’s been practicing his “writing” for months now by getting our small dry erase board and doodling on it with dry erase markers. He loves to do this! I decided it was time to plan some structured “Learning Time” activities for him. I printed and laminated several activities from This Reading Mama’s Learning the Alphabet. It has been a hit with him and I have been so surprised that he has been in to this as much as he has been!

His first day of Learning Time was on October 30th, 2017. Our Learning Time sessions started at just about 5-10 minutes long, but that’s a start! He has loved “writing” the letter A and saying the Letter A words (apple, arrow, astronaut, ant, ect) this month.

I also got our letter blocks from Handwriting Without Tears for Sarge to start exploring. He learned how to make the Letter A!

Beau

One day I put a fussy Beau at the table with a puzzle and he cheered right up! By the end, he was saying “baaaaa” for the sheep!

Bible

We read The Answers Book for Kids Volume 2 for our Bible reading this month. Our Memory Verse was Proverbs 20:11. It got very challenging to have this time with the girls with the boys around. Our concentrated school time when the boys are napping and/or in room time is limited, so I needed to find something short and yet meaningful and The Answers Book for Kids has been the perfect fit.

Classical Conversations

It’s been tin whistle time in CC. This year, Little Bug has really gotten in to the tin whistle! She took it upon herself to learn Mary Had a Little Lamb and asked if we could include tin whistle practice during our CC Review time. We ended up doing a duet of Mary Had a Little Lamb. When they were really in to their tin whistles and wanting to play them constantly, for my sanity’s sake, I let them take their tin whistles with them outside to serenade our neighbors!

We had a dress up day close to Halloween where the kids were allowed to wear a costume to community day. The director did a small costume parade and recognized each child which was so sweet. I enjoy being a part of a smaller community.

This month we also started working on the My Body project where each week the kids learned about several body system organs and then colored them in preparation to make their human body model during science time on weeks 11-12.

We are tracing maps more than we’ve ever done, but it is still not a consistent part of our weekly routine and I really would like for it to be! Maybe I should make this one of my goals for next semester after the holidays.

The girls have each improved greatly in their map tracing skills and it happened after I sat with them and modeled for them how to trace a map. Classical education at it’s finest. Modeling is so powerful! As you can see, Sarge joined us here for map tracing and scribbled all over one of our Geography Trivium tables. This was one of the instances where I saw he was maturing and ready to stimulate his brain with more structured learning.

The girls continued to work on learning the States and Capitals! We worked on our flipbooks and practiced using our puzzle maps as well as traced the USA.

KidsRock Praise Team

Little Bug joined our church’s kid’s praise team and she was SO excited about this! She is loving being a part of this team leading worship for KidsRock each Sunday.

Vacation

The week of October 16th, the girls went to the mountains with Grams and Gramps. Since our August trip had been stressful with the boys, Dave and I decided to send the girls and stay home with the boys. We hated to miss out, but we knew this was best for this year and we knew the girls would have a fabulous time with their Grams and Gramps! They went to a cave, an apple orchard, a nature preserve and then did their usual activities of hiking and enjoying the surrounding areas of where our cabin is. The only mandatory school for the girls that week was math flashcards for Little Bug and writing numbers 1-30 for Sweet Pea plus reading books!

At night, the girls really got in to learning to play games! Little Bug learned Racko, checkers, chess and Parcheesi. Parcheesi quickly became a favorite and Little Bug and Gramps have continued to play at home. The top, middle picture is so precious as Little Bug needed to roll a 1 to win and she rolled it and then was immediately congratulated by her little sister on her win!

Fall Fun

When they got home, we were able to make a family trip to the pumpkin patch for our annual pumpkin patch pictures! This is the first year of pumpkin patch pictures of our family of six!

This is a collage of our pumpkin patch pictures through the years!

Bottom right is 2009 (Little Bug - 5 months)

Bottom left is 2011 (Little Bug - 2yrs, Sweet Pea - 2 months)

Top left is 2014 (Little Bug - 5yrs, Sweet Pea - 3yrs, Sarge - 2 months)

Top right is 2017 (Little Bug - 8yrs, Sweet Pea - 6yrs, Sarge - 3yrs, Beau - 15 months)

Our church had a Trunk or Treat on October 29th so we attended that with all four kids! Beau was content on my back the whole night. It had suddenly turned cold and we both helped to keep each other warm! The three big kids had so much fun playing the games and collecting candy (they would never eat, haha!). They did each get to pick a piece of candy to eat that night!

On Halloween we trick or treated with Maria and her family! The weather was perfect and even slightly fall-like!

And now that Halloween is over it is officially the Holiday Season! We will continue to do school through the holidays, taking a few days off here and there!

- Elaine