Weekly Report: Weeks 35-36

This is going to be a long post mostly for myself, so please bear with me.  It is going to have a ton of pictures because we've had a very busy and memorable few weeks.  Somehow I managed to squeeze in two weeks of school into that time, but that was definitely not the focus of our month.

The biggest highlight was definitely our trip to Lake Powell and then northern Utah to a family reunion at our old family farm.  I took the three girls by myself and drove the entire trip (over 3000 miles!) without Tyler because he was busy taking finals.  It was daunting and exhausting, but well worth the effort. 
 

On the houseboat at Lake Powell

In our private cove at Lake Powell

Lydia helping Uncle Ken drive the boat

Adelaide sitting in her own camp chair, very pleased with herself.

Lydia in her element on an old fashioned train

Lydia and Ellie on the train

Eleanor helping Grandpa pick peas at the family farm

Lydia and Eleanor enjoying the hammock at the family farm

Then when we got back home, we went to the splash park and a few days later enjoyed a lot of Independence Day festivities.

Ellie at the splash park

Lydia and Adelaide at the splash park

Swimming at Grandma's house on the 4th of July

Elenaor helping Grandpa blow up fireworks

Lydia and Ellie swinging on a tire swing at the house Daddy grew up in on the 4th of July

Swimming at Daddy's old house on the 4th of July.  They wouldn't leave the stairs, but still had lots of fun!

Now, for actual school-related stuff, we officially reached my goal for Pre-K!  36 weeks of at least 3 days per week was my initial goal.  I've done it!  Going into homeschooling, I was most afraid that I wouldn't have the discipline to do all the work and that I liked it more in theory than in practice.  I've proven to myself this year that I do have the discipline to do what is needed.  We're not starting Kindergarten officially until August 6th, so we'll actually get a few more weeks of school in for PreK.  Right now I'm focusing on revving us up and getting more into the habit of doing school every day.  In Kindergarten, my goal is 170 days of school minimum (this year we did approximately 115 days).

Math:
We've started back into our curricula rather than just mommy-inspired lessons.  Lydia is definitely understanding 10s place value much better now, which is a big deal for her.  C-rods are so brilliant for this and really helped.  I've also learned the value of promising M&Ms for every 2 problems she completes.  Her productivity has gone up exponentially.

Reading:
We continue to slowly go through OPGTR.  Lydia is still working on silent-e words.  Right now our speed is mostly determined by her lack of focus during practice than by her decoding ability.  She just needs to work on fluency, but we'll keep on trucking.  I've also started requiring that we read at least a page out of Little Bear every day too.  Right now she can read about 60% of the words (I help with the rest), and the fact that she has almost all of the episodes of the Little Bear tv show memorized is helping with some familiarity too.

Memorization:
Lydia officially recited "Sweet and Low" today without help or reminders.  It is the longest poem she's memorized yet (16 lines).  I think I will just let her review it for a few more days before she starts something else.  I'm not sure what we'll start next because I sort of want to wait until she officially starts Kindergarten before I take anything new off her list, but we'll see.

Handwriting:
Lydia's still doing well with this.  She's doing about 2-3 pages in her HWT Kindergarten workbook.  I really don't expect it to last us for too long into Kindergarten, but it is still good for her.

Spelling:
We're still doing AAS.  Lydia just finished Step 5 and started Step 6 today.  We're still loving it.

And that's our last few weeks.  Before we start Kindergarten, I'll write up my end of year review, but as a spoiler, I'll just say that I am so proud of Lydia and how well she's doing!