Week 3

It was another good week at our house.  The girls are keeping me very busy, and it is only going to get more so when Lydia starts up dance and soccer within the next few weeks.  It's a good busy though, and it keeps them happy (and dirty).

The weather continues to be nice, so we are spending a lot of time outside.  On Saturday, we took a drive to Eureka Springs and rode on an old fashioned train.  Lydia absolutely LOVES trains and has for years.  I think that this ride was the highlight of her life.  Every day since she has asked me if it is Saturday again so we can go ride a train.  The train ride itself was fun.  It had an old fashioned conductor who we enjoyed and at one point they let us get out and put pennies on the track to see them get squished.  We are definitely going to try to take a ride on the trains in Utah when we are there this fall.

Math:
We did pages 75-87 in Essential Math A.  Lydia keeps flying through it, even though we are getting to stuff that she didn't know before we started and are actually doing the lesson part of each page, and not just the worksheet.  This week has mostly been about teaching her that numbers have an order, both forwards and backwards.  Essential Math A only deals in numbers 1-10, so we've done a lot of counting forwards and backwards and a lot of filling in the blank and looking for patterns with number orders.  For example, today we got out 10 little plastic people and counted them.  Then I told her one walked away, and asked how many were left.  I kept doing this until we got to zero.  The point was to show that counting backwards was the same as removing one each time.

We also started MEP Reception.  It is a little different, and we only did the first lesson, so I don't have a whole lot to report on that yet, except that I can already see that it will stretch her a little.

Reading:
We continued to work on short vowel "a" cvc words and are working through lesson 30 in OPGTR.  I think she's getting it better and better.  I discovered that she will practice longer if I use the iPad or laptop to help her instead of letter magnets.  So we are doing ABC Magic Phonics on our iPad, which is basically just an app of words that you can sound out.  I also discovered readingbear.com, and I think I'll be using it a lot.  It is a website of videos that sound out words and then show you what the words are.  It is pretty well done and Lydia enjoyed it.  We're still having a problem with guessing, but I think that's fairly normal.  Oh, and we also are learning our first sight word, "the."

Lydia started reading her first Progressive Phonics reader.  It has text that the parent reads and then the child reads the words in bold.  It allows a more complex story than a reader that the child does on their own, and I like it so far.  We are on page 6.

Memorization/Calendar Time:
We continue to do calendar almost every day.  We have moved on from "Happy Thoughts" for memorzation and have started learning all the continents and their locations.  We still review the First Article of Faith and "Happy Thoughts" every day, though.  I am especially focusing on making sure Lydia says all the words and says them clearly.

Miscellaneous:
Lydia finished About Three early this week.  She started the next workbook in the series called Bigger Steps.  She is doing fairly well with it and got through page 10.

A few of Lydia's favorite things to watch are the Life and Planet Earth documentaries by the BBC.  We often watch these on Sundays before church.  Lydia's favorite is the Life one on birds, and she loves to draw lammergeiers with sidewalk chalk.  These documentaries, combined with the things that come up in day-to-day life are all the science we are doing right now, but I think she's still learning a lot.