This is nice. It is quiet as I am the only one up, other than the dogs who are outside playing.
I thought that I would give a quick "school" update, as some really neat things are going on.
K -- I have not been doing any particular program with K. We just play and of course I have all our learning toys scattered around the house. Thanks to various Leap Frogbrand toys her alphabet skills have really jumped over the last couple of months. I would say that she recognizes more than 20 letters, but not all 26 consistently. She can give the name of the letter and the sound it makes. The other day I caught her sounding out some words with these skills. She could not quite put it all together and say the word, but she has figured out part of this skill. And, she does it on her own.
She counts to twenty now. And can count to 10 in spanish, thanks to her sister, Dora, and Diego.
Puzzles, which a few months ago did not interest her at all, have suddenly become a favorite. She loves to put together the six and ten-piece puzzles we have. Now, if I can just convince her that doing it at the table instead of the floor will save her frustration over EM.
K, is very creative and has always loved to draw. She is very detailed and takes her time with her art. In the last few weeks she has been drawing picture books for us. These have been as small as three pages and as long as 10. The pictures tell a story (but you have to have her tell you what it is, and then you can totally see it) in sequence. She will disappear for a long time to her room, to the point I begin to wonder what she has gotten into, to draw. This is her time and she is very clear that she wants to be left alone by everyone while she is working on them.
EM -- EM is now 14 months old an is doing all the normal toddler stuff. Her daily activities are generally exploring the world around her. This is not a lot of fun for me when I am running around trying to clean the house, but is very exciting for her. She is so happy finding all these new things. She is really communicating with us, although the number of words we understand is still small. She is as into her books as the other two were at that age. She will bring me one of her board books and sit down next to me while I read one or two pages, then she takes the book an goes off to "read" it to herself.
MB -- School is going okay for her. We have days that we are really on, and other days that it is kind of hit and miss. Math is going much more slowly than it had been. We have hit telling time to the quarter-hour and fractions. We are having to spend more time reviewing and working together on this. I don't mind, but MB is used to quickly getting a math concept and running with it. So, she is a little frustrated. Which really is a good thing - she needs to learn how to be frustrated. And we have talked about that.
Reading/Language Art skills. We are doing so many different things here. In January we began a spelling program. It is basic words and weekly word families. She takes a test on Monday morning with the words for the week. She likes taking these tests and so far has spelled out every word correctly. Later in the week we do one or two corresponding worksheets. We are still doing ten dolche words each week. She is still doing well with learning the sight words on the flashcards and doing some fill-in-the blank worksheets. The transferring this knowledge over to actual reading skills is just now starting to happen.
And the reading is beginning to click. Every night she reads to either myself or her daddy. It still surprises me the small words she struggles with and the big words she can figure out with context. She confuses words words like: it/to; I/A; like/look; saw/was; on/no and so forth. These are the same words she was having trouble with several months ago. I am figuring that maybe she will grow out of it, and I just keep reminding her of the right word. At the same time the constant sounding out of every single word has stopped. She does not do it very often!! It has made reading time much more bearable for me. The other night she shocked me by reading the words teacher, invented, impressed and candy with no help and not sounding them aloud. I was impressed!!
We are using the Dragon Slayer Academy books as comprehension practice. We are reading a chapter then she will tell me what is happening. The next day she has to give me a quick review of what has happened and then we read on. Doing this with a book she finds interesting and funny is so much easier than trying to get her to give narrations for science and history right now.
History is slogging along. More from just not having the time to really delve into it as much as I would like. We have come back around to the Egyptians again, but are moving on. MB does not show as much interest as this fall, and we spent a lot of time on them then. We both want to get to the Greeks where we will spend alot of time. When we get there MB may be just about ready for the Odysseus series by Mary Pope Osborne that she really wants to read.
Science is fun. We are doing the human body. Which, she is really enjoying. A different body system every few weeks. Everyday we have a new question to google for her. Her retention for this science unit has been great. Every now and then I just give her little pop quizzes, and she is remembering the info - Where is the smallest muscle (the ear), What type of muscles are in your legs (stripped muscles), etc.
I wish that we were all a bit more organized and focused around here. But, this does seem to be working for us. Some days we are really good about doing this "organized" reading and work, and other days it is very much child-led, but generally within the parameters of what we are studying. It is becoming a nice blend of parent-led and child-led. I give some focus and direction and they run with it.
The troops are stirring. Have a great Sunday!
Peace,
Amy
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