Weekly Report: Week 32

Just another regular week here.  The girls and I have been enjoying the sunny weather so much.  Today I even set up a clothesline outside for my laundry for fun.  It is sunny with a slight breeze, the perfect laundry day weather.

We did a full week's worth of school and even made it to the Botanical Garden with some friends, although we missed Little Sprouts because of time confusion.  Oh well, the girls still had fun and enjoyed being outside playing with pretty flowers everywhere.  We also made it to the library, which is always a daunting task for me because the girls all want to go in different directions and there is just one of me and three of them.  Somehow we made it out in one piece and even got some books!

We're technically only 4 weeks away from the end of our "school year," but I think we'll just keep going at a regular pace.  I don't feel like I can just set aside any of these subjects without Lydia forgetting a significant portion.  We also have a good routine going.  We do have some vacations coming up and we'll take time off school for them, but I think we'll probably hit more around 40 weeks than my original goal of 36 before Kindergarten starts the second week of August.  At this point, though, Kindergarten won't look that much different than what we're already doing.

Reading:
Lydia got through lesson 68 in OPGTR.  She mostly worked on a_e words but also learned about words like he, she, me, etc.  She is picking it all up so well, I'm very impressed.  Our biggest problem with reading is inattention.  She has to be redirected back to the page every word.  I've worked out some games and systems to try to keep her as focused as possible, so hopefully that attention will just come in time and maturity.

Lydia is listening to Black Beauty during her naptime now and seems to be enjoying it.  The girls are also really enjoying the My First Little House books a lot and I got several of them from the library.  They love hearing about Laura, Mary, Carrie, and their dog Jack.  I've been doing some informal narration questions with Lydia after she listens to books or stories and she's making me really hopeful for when we start writing, which will be fairly narration-heavy.  We were listening to Story of the World in the car a few days ago and after we got home, I asked her what happened in our story.  She told me that Caesar cried.  Which he did, according to the story.  So she's picking up on things, despite my fears that auditory things will be a huge challenge for her.

Math:
I wrote more in depth about my math plans here.  This is what we're going to focus on for the next while.  We started out by just playing some math related games yesterday.  Lydia, Ellie, and I played Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, and Hi Ho Cherry-o yesterday and each won a game.  The girls love playing them, but I really don't.  Those games are definitely more a labor of love than enjoyment.  But sometimes that's a mother's job. :)

Spelling:
I am absolutely loving All About Spelling.  It is a brilliant program and perfect for Lydia.  If a week and a half can say anything, I will definitely continue to use it.  Lydia is now on step 3 in the program and has learned almost all the phonograms for Level 1, how to alphabetize, how to segment words so you can tell what sounds they are made up of, and what the vowels are.

Memorization:
She has now finished our list.  I think I'll go ahead and add some new poems and scriptures to her list.  I already picked out some selections that I wanted for Kindergarten, so we'll just start with them.  She is really blowing me away with her ability to memorize and really enjoys doing it.  I am hoping to get a video of her reciting all of this year's memorization, but I'm not sure I can keep her interested that long.  I'm going to try, though.

Art Study:
I put up 7 new art pieces in our dining room.  I'm using Ambleside Online's art study choices for Degas and Manet.  They are from a previous term.  I wasn't super interested in this term's selections, so I chose these because they have dancers, horses, and trains in them.  Those are things that interest the girls a lot.