Cold and Snowy week
We’ve had a busy week! School for the kiddos, evening things for me, Jason has had long hours. Fun fun stuff!
This week we started to work into our routine. The children seem to be really liking having a certain order to the day, and they definitely like having time with me by themselves in the routine. Our days are starting earlier, nap times are later, and bedtime remains the same [grin]
We will normally have Thursdays off for a day with my parents (and me running errands), so I chose to take a day off school even though we were staying home yesterday. I had some housework that getting caught up on would help in the coming weeks. This was not helpful, it would have been better to do our routine even without school (assign helpers for the work during their time, and do some of the reading aloud anyway).
Some things I learned this week:
1. Nate participates at story time better if *I’m* participating.
2. Memory work has to be done more in a round than one child’s then the next.
3. There is too much to do and too little time to do it … and we’ve not even started everything! And there’ll only be more in the years to come! (Of course, everything is mommy directed right now …)
4. A day off routine makes that day *and* the following day harder.
The children did really well! Margaret and Nate are working on memorizing The Vulture in IEW’s Poetry memorization program. They really like learning the poetry. We’re also working on catechism, Bible verses, and a hymn. Right now, the hymn is “Holy, Holy, Holy” and we’re learning a verse a week. I organized our memory work into boxes a la Simply Charlotte Mason‘s plan only through the days of the week. So far I really like it.
Math is very basic at the moment: Number Recognition and Counting. 1-100, Skip counting by 10s and by 5s. We haven’t started a “formal” math program, and probably won’t for quite a while.
I’m very much liking Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading Margaret is flying through the lessons (which aren’t too long) My only (minor) complaint is I think she gets distracted by the parent’s script, so I’m considering typing separately the child’s portion. She’s also doing Explode the Code Book B which we’re almost done with. These couple months off have really enhanced her speed and ability with it.
Finally, our main focus this year is Geography. Understanding a little bit about where we live and how it fits into God’s world before we start studying history. We started very slowly this week by “reading” a book about maps. It was …. hmmm … further over their heads than I thought, so I would read silently the page and explain using the pictures. That worked better.
Next week, more fun is involved, so you’ll have to come back to see what we’ve been up to!
Nice to see other preschoolers! Sounds like a fun week.
Snazzy blog, btw…haven’t seen this layout, you must have done it! 🙂
Thanks! It was pretty fun 🙂
LOL No, I didn’t do it … it was one of the oh-so-long-ago early blogspot layouts … they don’t even offer it anymore [grin] I’m too lazy to change it … well, and I still like it!
We like Explode the Code and IEW's Poetry also! And, yes- sometimes a day "off" can make it harder on our kiddos but I want them to also learn to adapt… so, I try to keep a bit of sturcture like bed times, memory period in the morning & family worship at night. They do seem to adapt to days "off" better the older they get. Too much free time for littles leads to discpline! We enjoyed seeing you this week! 🙂
So glad to hear you are enjoying teaching your little ones at home. I remember when, my not so little ones,were that young and how much fun preschool was. I have enjoyed every year! Can you believe Hope will be in 6th grade next year? Technically that is middle school. Ahh!
We did a little math yesterday with Jay. There were some clearance workbooks at Dollar General, and there was an exercise about <10 and >10, so I drew a number line, and Jay did great after we talked through a few examples. I'm still tempted to buy the Sonlight K4 program and see if we can get on a schedule, but it's an investment, and we've still got the "who's in charge today?" and "are we going to disturb Daddy's work from home?" issues. I think Paul and I need to spend some time praying about to homeschool or not and if so, how?
Dawn, I got the Heart of Dakota catalog, and it looks good. Really what we need is a schedule to see whether we can follow through and get disciplined. I’m not worried right now about getting the learning done- the learning is coming along- I just want to prove to myself that we can stick reasonably well to a plan. I also think having a scheduled devotions time would be extremely beneficial for all of us!!
Thanks for the suggestion!
Wow, I haven’t looked at this blog in maybe five years and didn’t expect it to still be here. It’s great to see that you’re still in business, and still using the same URL! That’s a rarity these days.