Weekly Report: Week 22

We took this week off because I was busy working on consignment sale stuff, but we had a busy week last week (that I forgot to report on).  We're still working on "ng" endings in reading and we've started back up with addition in math.

This week has been fun, though.  We've spent a quite a bit of time "unschooling" and I think the girls have learned a lot.

A while back (like 2 years ago), I bought a birdhouse kit in a dollar store.  I thought the girls might enjoy "decorating" it and putting it in the tree.  And boy, was I right.  I let them color all over it before I assembled it a few days ago and they've talked about it daily.  I sure hope a little bird makes it his home, because my girls would be so happy.

I also mentioned recently that I've been working with Lydia to teach her countries.  I had the idea to get her an app to help with this and it is working incredibly well!  The app I found is call Map Puzzles for Kids.  It is basically just several puzzles of different regions of the world.  In the few days we've had the app, Lydia has learned about 15 new countries (and their locations).  Her favorite is probably Italy, which she told me "looks like a foot.  It is walking."  Some of the countries she has learned are Japan, South Africa, Argentina, Greenland, Ireland, and United Kingdom.

We got another new app by Logic of English.  It is basically a phonograms app and I've decided to use it with Eleanor.  It teaches all the sounds of each letter instead of just one, like most children's phonics apps.  When playing it with Ellie, I discovered that she knows her letters much better than I thought she did.  She passed the first two levels of the game on her first try!  It is a very well-thought out program and I'm excited to use it more in the future.

I'm going to end with a silly conversation I had with Ellie today.  Eleanor and I were looking at old Ranger Rick magazines and talking about the animals in the pictures.  There was a picture of a bat, and I asked her what it was called.  She said it was an owl, so I corrected her.  Then she very matter-of-factly told me, "Not a bat.  It looks like an owl to me."  She wouldn't believe me even after we talked about it for quite a while and she got fairly indignant with me about it.  We started the whole conversation over again a few pages later with a rhino that she declared to be a dinosaur.  I guess she already thinks she knows better than her mama at the age of two years old.  She's a funny kid.