Weekly Report: Week 28

We were gone the first half of the week because I took the girls to Texas for my dad's 50th birthday.  They had a lot of fun playing with their aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents for a few days.  Because Tyler's schedule isn't very flexible, I took them on the 10+ hour drive myself.  My girls are such good travelers, though, so it wasn't any problem ...except when I ran out of gas in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas.  But that was even not too bad thanks to a friendly local sheriff who came from 20 miles away to help!  Gotta love Texas.  All told, it was a pretty good trip.

We did manage to fit a week's worth of school in after we got home, though.  I focused on reading and Lydia is almost through with the "th" sections in OPGTR.  There are a few sections about it, and they have a lot of practice reading, which is why it is taking us so long.  Also, I noticed that Lydia pronounces unvoiced "th" with a slight "s" at the beginning.  So, for example, the word "with" sounds like "wisth."  I probably should talk to her speech therapist about that, as it was impeding her reading a little.

After reading, our next biggest focus was probably handwriting.  I discovered a new app that I am totally loving called LetterSchool.  It is great because it is simple enough for Lydia to enjoy (she doesn't like apps that are too flashy or fluffy), but it also teaches handwriting in a stroke-by-stroke way with lots of practice.  And the best part is it even has the Handwriting Without Tears font and strokes!  Lydia spent a few hours playing this game last week, and the whole time she practiced fine motor control and correct letter construction.  It was great.

Math was more on the back burner last week.  Lydia's attention span wasn't that great, so I had to pick and choose, and I chose reading and handwriting over math for the time being.  I think we did math one day.  We are still focusing on subtraction, so nothing new or revolutionary.  Although, I am encountering a problem.  I can't get Lydia to grasp the concept of adding or subtracting using a number line.  She does great with cuisenaire rods or counters, but not number lines.  She also has trouble adding or subtracting by "counting on" or "counting back" and I think the two are related.  Any ideas?

Lydia also finished listening to The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle and is now listening to The Burgess Animal Book for Children.  She is really enjoying animals a lot right now, so I'm sticking with books that have animals as a central part.  She seems to be enjoying it a lot and most days she can tell me a few sentences about what she heard in her "naptime story."

Lydia's First Time Writing Her Name

I didn't know Lydia knew how to spell her name on her own.  Today, while we were outside enjoying our beautiful high 60s weather, Lydia was playing with sidewalk chalk, drawing things like sailboats and cassette players (thanks, Blue's Clues).  Then I heard her spelling her name to herself, so I walked over, and this is what I saw:

Yes, the "y" looks like a cherry, and the "d" is backwards and the "a" is a balloon, but not only does she know how to spell her name, but she was using that knowledge in her play!  It makes me happy.  I guess I better be more consistent with our handwriting lessons.

Weekly Report: Week 13

Our family had a great weekend and enjoyed the last of the beautiful weather.  It still isn't too bad out, but it was great last weekend.  Our week has been uneventful, but we did do school every day except for Wednesday.  Oh, and Adelaide is officially crawling.  She is still very inefficient at it, but it is there.  I'm sure she'll get better in the next few weeks, too. 

Math:
We started EM back up.  This week has been mostly focused on counting to 20, which is something Lydia has no problem with thanks to Tally Tots. Even Eleanor has almost got it down thanks to that fun little app.  Mostly I've been using this time to try to introduce the idea of place value, which will take a lot more time, I think.  Anyways, Lydia finished p.25-27 in EM and did a few pages of Miquon.  She almost has counting to 100 down, but it is going to take some more practice, I think.

Coloring her math book.

Reading:
Lyddie is halfway through Lesson 48 in OPGTR.  She is doing so well.  I am really excited about her progress.  She continues to get faster and to understand more and more blending concepts.  A few more lessons and we'll be into digraphs!  She has yet to read spontaneously, but she's doing well in our lessons, so I don't mind. It will come, I'm sure.  She still wants me to tickle her at the end of every sentence, which seems to be fairly motivating.  It has the side effect of helping her recognize when a sentence is done, too, so I'm not complaining!

Handwriting:
We started Handwriting Without Tears this week.  I bought the preschool teacher's manual and workbook because her fine motor skills are about a year behind where they should be.  So far she's loving it, even though we haven't even done any writing yet.  This week we worked on getting her familiar with the 4 different shapes that make up every capitol letter as well as the words "vertical," "horizontal," and "diagonal." 

HWT has wooden shapes you can buy, but I didn't think it was worth $30 for them, so I made my own from the template in the book.  It took me over an hour to cut them all out of cardstock and then laminate them, but they turned out pretty well, I think.  The 4 shapes that HWT teaches to make capitol letters are big curve, little curve, and big line, little line.  I made 6-8 of each, and Lydia has enjoyed playing with them to make letters on her own.

Lydia likes it if I help her spell her name.

We also have a chalk slate that I'll break out later, but this week was mostly just getting familiar with the shapes and learning about correct pencil grip.

Memorization:
Lydia finished "At the Seaside" and we started Proverbs 3:5-8.  She is amazing.  She's going to be almost done with what I planned for the whole year by Christmas.  I'm going to have to sit down and come up with some more for her to do.  She really loves doing memorization and we do it almost every day, even when we don't do the other subjects.  I usually quiz her on it while I make lunch and she acts very proud of herself when she gets them right.  Here's the list of we've done so far.

Watching big sister work on school.

That's our week.  We'll probably do an abbreviated week next week because Daddy won't have school on Thursday and Friday.  I expect Monday-Wednesday to be business as usual, though.

Weekly Report: Week 11

This week was a bit unusual.  On Sunday, all three girls were a little sick, so we stayed home from church.  On Monday, they seemed better, but on Tuesday afternoon, the younger two had fevers and Lydia had a horrible sounding cough, so every day since we've stayed home.  Lydia only went to one day of therapy and missed dance class.  We also watched way to much tv.  And by "we," I mean the girls.  I don't mind letting them when they are sick, though.

On Sunday afternoon, the girls were well enough to "help" us make a jack-o-lantern.  They were very excited to pick out the pumpkin on Saturday.  Lydia and Eleanor seemed very nervous about touching the pumpkin "guts" and got bored watching Dad after about 5 minutes, but they were very excited with the end result when we put it on our front porch.  Afterwards, we watched the "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," which they loved and have watched several times since.  This is the first time we've ever really attempted Halloween with them.  Lydia has come such a long way in the last year that we are actually contemplating taking her trick-or-treating, something that we would never have thought possible last year.  Next week, I'll post pictures of the girls in their costumes.  Lydia is going to be Winnie the Pooh and Ellie is going to be a frog.

School continues to go on like it should.  Every day during lunch, we work on calendar, memorization, and mapwork.  Then after lunch and when Ellie is down for a nap, I ask Lydia is she would rather go down for a nap now, or do math.  She always wants to do math, then reading.  We usually spend an hour or so combined doing them and then she goes down for her required hour-long nap.  This system is working really well for us right now.

I did decide to add a subject to our day.  Lydia's fine motor skills are coming along nicely and I think she's ready to start some early handwriting practice.  I decided on the program Handwriting Without Tears for her because it was designed by an occupational therapist and honestly, it looks like it was designed for her.  I don't love the font, but I only plan to use it until her skills are good enough, and then we'll probably switch to another program.  That probably won't be until 1st or 2nd grade, though, so we'll see.  I've ordered my materials and they should get here in the next week or two.  I'll write more about it then.

Math:
Lydia did pages 9-14 of Essential Math A.  I think she has officially figured out the concept of less/more.  It has been a long few weeks, but I feel proud that I was finally able to explain it to her in a way that she would understand.  I realized that it wasn't an issue of comparing (so which is more, 7 or 9) but that she honestly didn't even know what the words "less" and "more" meant in relation to each other.  So we spent and entire math lesson just taking the little people manipulatives I have and putting more in a group and less in that group.  We did this back and forth and back and forth.  After that, she seemed to catch on pretty quickly and today she did a less/more page in EMa and got them all correct!  We worked on a greater than/lesser than Miquon sheet all week, but I think we'll probably repeat it now that she seems to be understanding better.


Reading:
Lydia's reading is coming along.  This week she read her first 5-letter word, "bells."  We're almost done with Lesson 41 in OPGTR, but she's now 20% done with Reading Bears and still a bit ahead in it than her OPGTR lessons.  Her reading is getting quicker and she's starting to recognize a few common words without having to sound them out.

I went to a consignment sale this week and found this set of Nora Gaydos readers for $3 in like new condition.  They are perfect for where Lydia is right now, so we'll be using them as extra practice.  It was a nice score.

Memorization:
We've been working on solidifying her part for the Primary Program which is this Sunday.  I'm a little bit nervous because she's been gone from church for two weeks and hasn't been able to practice at all.  Tomorrow they are having a special practice, so I hope that will be enough for her.  It will have to do, I guess!

Little Triumph

Lydia had her first therapy appointment this week.  One of the things we're working on is getting her to draw a vertical line on paper.  She is also working on following small directions and not ignoring adults when they tell her to do something and she wants to just play.  These are just a few of the MANY goals she has, but my story is especially relevant to those.

A few months back Scholastic was having a sale on their website for $1 PDF books. This is a sale they have a few times a year, and I thought I'd look through and see what they had.  They had several workbooks for preschoolers that focus on pre-writing skills, and I bought a few.  I figured it would be better to print them out over and over than have to buy a bunch and go through them quickly.  Especially with our awesome laser printer and free paper I get at the back-to-school sales every year.  Because I had these on hand, I figured I'd look through them and see if there were any pages that focused on drawing lines in a controlled way.  I found a few pages in this book, and printed them out.

Well, this morning I sat down with Lydia and got a pencil and talked her through it.  She was whiny about it at first because she just wanted the pencil to scribble on the pages.  The first two pages we tried she just whined.  On the third page, however, we had a breakthrough.  The picture showed three dogs, with guidelines down to 3 bones.  The goal is to draw between the guidelines to help the dogs get to the bones.  I helped her do them, and then gave her the pencil to try to do it herself.  And she did!  She drew from the dogs down to the bones!  She had troubles staying in the lines, and that was fine because she's only two, but she tried!  I've never had a breakthrough like that with her before, and it was great!  It gave me hope that I will enjoy this homeschooling thing.  If I can find so much joy in my two year old drawing a few scribbles on a paper, I think will do fine.  I was also excited to see that I could get through to her and show her things without her entirely baulking at my attempts.

So that's my little story. Small, but it made me feel pretty good today.