September 2014

Sensory Bins I pulled 3 together this month. Tried to keep it seasonal, at least a little. They have a hard time doing these fun things by themselves, which is what they are designed for, at least in part, so for now I'm having to get in there with them and encourage them to involve themselves with things like these. Gwen Reading She nearly made it through the first book (Book A) of "Get Ready for the Code". I knew she pretty much already had her letters and sounds down, but I wanted to make sure we laid a really solid foundation there and I think doing a few papers makes her feel very official. So far she's "learned" f, b, k, t, m, and r. I found some fun, old letter books for sale at the library a while back and snagged them up. So whenever she learns a new letter, we read that particular letter book a bunch. She does really well at tracing letters, but she has to really concentrate. Whenever she learns a new letter, we put it up on our "word wall" and she practices tracing it in cornmeal and cuts that letter out of magazines for her letter book. Math She's doing Saxon K math right alongside Miles. So far, she can keep up just fine. She's a little slower than Miles, but that's totally understandable. Mostly we work on calendar stuff, simple patterns, pictographs, sorting, and number recognition. She can count up to 32ish, only missing one or two numbers. She knows all shapes and can easily recognize numbers 1-10. Miles Reading He worked more than half way through the first "Explode the Code" book which concentrates on short vowel sounds and cvc words. We've worked hard on short a and short i. I was surprised at how quickly he picked up sounding out those sandwich words, so I started checking out the beginning BOB books from the library and he's doing really well with that. Whatever sight words are in the BOB book are the ones we work on. Everytime he gets a new sight word, we put it up on our "word wall". We've tried lots of different ways to practice sight words. Spelling them with banana grams, scrabble cards, tracing in corn meal, matching games, and cutting those words out of magazines for his word book. Math He's working through Saxon K math and is doing great. I can tell it's really easy for him, but I don't want to jump ahead too much because I want to make sure the foundation there is solid. He has really loved acting out story problems with the little bears. Peter Rabbit Party It has taken us almost a full year, but we've read through the entire anthology of Beatrix Potter. Man I love all those stories she wrote! This was great practice for my kids to just sit and listen, because the pictures were small and few and far between. It always shocked me how much they remembered from the stories and how well their attention span lengthened. To celebrate finishing we had a Peter Rabbit Party. I hung "herbs" and such from our kitchen ceiling just like Peter's mom. We ate foods that Peter Rabbit (or other Beatrix Potter characters) ate, such as: fish, potatoes, carrots, berries, bread and jam and peas. I even brewed some peppermint tea (in the story Peter's mom makes him chamomile tea for his upset stomach), but the kids didn't dare drink it. I printed out coloring pages from the story which they colored. Then we had to put them in order, glue them to paper, and retell the story. When we were done, we had made our very own Peter Rabbit book! They finished off the night by watching a Peter Rabbit movie we own. They were so sad when it was done, which I took as a compliment. Now they are looking forward to finishing "The Tale of Despereaux", which they are reading with their dad, so we can have another party. Field Trips Gwen's little joy school group had their monthly field trip to the big West Jordan Library and we all got to tag along. They showed us the back room and how they sort books, and the cool machines that help them do it. It was so fun! Miles even got his very own library card. We told him he could get one once he learned how to read. He earned it! Art Art projects are kind of an ongoing thing around our house. There are always papers hung up on the fridge, on our walls, in envelopes ready to be mailed... I just thought I'd document any out of the ordinary art projects we do. We have homeschool group on Wednesdays. My favorite thing is seeing all the creative things these other moms come up with. Our homeschool group is focusing on values this year. I took a turn in September and we talked about creativity. We watched a mormon message from President Uchtdorf, read "Not A Box" and then made creations out of the things in our recycling . Sorting Laundry totally counts as school related, right? :) I love seeing this friendship bloom between Miles and Gwen. Sometimes, by quiet time they are ready to tear each other to shreds, but today they begged to stay outside longer after their picnic. They were being so cute, I allowed it. I hope they are always good friends. Of course, this list doesn't show all the school stuff we fit into the nooks and crannies of our day, but that would be too hard to document I think. We sing a patriotic song and say the pledge in the mornings, we play learning games, we read and read and read some more. We go to the library for story times and puppet shows, we watch a "learning show" in the mornings, we say a scripture and sing a song before dinner and have regular family home evening. Whew, I'm tired. This is not to be intended as bragging, I wish I could do so much more. Rather, I'm just trying to remember what I'm busy all day doing!