Week 2

This week was rather hectic.  Lydia started a new schedule at therapy and we did a lot of out of the house activities.  Monday was so beautiful, that we spent the entire afternoon playing outside.  On Wednesday, we went to my in-law's house for the day and played there and at the splash park near their home.  The girls LOVE the splash park and I really wish we had one nearer to us. (This picture is from earlier in the summer).

On Thursday, we had a play date with several kids at our house, which is always fun.  Lydia and Eleanor both got completely filthy, digging in the dirt, but they loved it. Tyler came home early from his rotations, so I was finally able to get a new driver's license (I lost mine a few weeks ago), go grocery shopping, and hit up the Rhea Lana half-priced sale.  I got the girls some new clothes and a few stuffed animals.  My favorites of the animals were a raccoon, otter, and ostrich.

As for school, we didn't do quite as much as I would have hoped, but I did reach my minimum goal.

Math:
We did pages 61-74 in Essential Math A.  We are now getting to stuff that is a little more challenging for Lydia.  Up until now we've been coasting quite a bit, so I expect we'll start slowing down.  Lydia already knew how to count things and could read her numbers.  Starting today we're going to be focusing on number order and patterns.

Reading:
We're still working on figuring out blending.  I'm seeing that Lydia is completely capable of blending, she just doesn't really want to do the work lots of times.  So she'll see the word "can" and will tell me that it is "cat."  So we're focusing on looking at the whole word and taking the time to sound out each letter or section of the word.  She also has very little stamina for it, which is age appropriate. So right now I'll do a main 5 minute lesson where we work on a few words, and then throughout the day, I'll ask her to sound out a word here and there.  We're staying on lesson 29 of OPGTR until she masters this.

Read Alouds:
I was bad about these this week.  We read several picture books, but I'm not sure we read the Book of Greek Myths at all this week.  Oh well. And Eleanor ripped another library picture book.  Grrr.

Memorization/Calendar Time:
We continued to solidify the First Article of Faith, focusing on saying every word exactly right.  We also began memorizing "Happy Thought" by Robert Louis Stevenson.
For calendar, we talked about the date, and she now knows it is August and can read the year as well.  We continue to say all the days of the week every day, focusing on what today is and what tomorrow is.  She has the week mostly memorized, but is having difficulty translating that to today and tomorrow.  I think doing it every day over time will clear this up for her.

Miscellaneous:
We did pages 15-28 of About Three.  Mostly it was pre-writing skills like tracing lines, but there was some matching as well.  I was especially encouraged today, because we did a page of same/different, and Lydia picked out all the different objects perfectly.  We've been working on this, and just a week ago, she couldn't do it!

Oh, and Lydia and Eleanor spent a ton of time with their Leap Frog tag reader this week.  We have a U.S. map a solar system map that go with it, as well as this set of animal flashcards.  Lydia can pick out Pennsylvania, Texas, and California, and she knows where both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean are compared to the U.S.  So that's nifty, especially since we're doing the oceans later this year as one of our memorization items.  She's learning a lot from the solar system one too, especially combined with the Make a Scene: Outer Space app that she loves.  The app is basically an interactive sticker book, but she's getting familiar with the planet's names and several constellations too.  They're both learning so much from our tag games, that I'm considering getting the World Map and the Human Body ones also.  Maybe for Christmas.

That was our week.  I'm loving homeschool preschool so far!