Weekly Report: Days 13-17

This week was Eleanor's birthday!  She was so excited and ate it up.  She picked a pink cake with pink frosting and pink candles and wanted all "princess."  It is so funny, I don't know where her princess thing came from.  It certainly wasn't from me.  I always swore that I wouldn't be one of those moms, but Ellie came by it as if it was in her DNA or something.  She is so cute, though, that I am trying my best to let her be happy while not buying her lots of junk.  Her favorite presents were a princess costume and some My First Little House books.  She ended up having her princess dress taken away yesterday because she unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet, which is not how princesses behave (she got it back today).  It is hard being three.

Reading:
Lydia continues to be able to do a full lesson most days.  She finished Section 7 in OPGTR and started section 8, which is all the different ways to do long vowel "a".  So far, she has covered "ai" and "ay" with no problem at all!  This week was also a milestone for her because she has started using reading in her daily life to help her get information about the world around her.  I got a book from the library about Merlin and she brought it to me and asked me what "Merlin" was!  A few other times I've noticed that she will try to read a word or two to help her know what she's looking at.  I'm excited to see the beginnings of this transition for her.  Oh, and OPGTR discussed homonyms and now she is totally fascinated by homonyms.  She will say verbatim, "[word] and [word] sound the same, but they don't mean the same thing.  They must be a homonyms!"

Math:
We are mostly focusing on Math Mammoth.  It was neat because for the last day or two we've been doing a unit on using number lines to help us do addition.  A few months ago, Lydia's Essential Math B book talked about this and it was very difficult for her to grasp.  Today she did several problems all by herself without any help from me!  It is nice to see things sink in now that we are revisiting them.

One of my favorite of Lydia's pictures to date. "I'm swimming at the lake [Powell] and I build a sandcastle!"

Spelling:
We are in Lesson 9 in AAS.  The words seem pretty easy for her, so mostly we are focusing on handwriting while she goes through the lists, although we do continue to review phonograms, concepts, and troublesome words.

Handwriting:
In her HWT Kindergarten book, Lydia has started having full sentences to copy.  She is struggling to translate her written letters into the confines of lines and words.  It is really good for her to have this practice, because it is obvious that she is going to need quite a bit of direct instruction in it.  Luckily, I plan to just do copywork for the rest of the year after she finishes her handwriting book, which will probably be in the next few months.

Adelaide worked so hard to storm the castle, but didn't know what to do once she got there.

Memorization:
Lydia finally finished the 4th Article of Faith, although we continue to review it daily.  She started "Knight-in-Armour" by A.A. Milne because she is really into dragons lately and I love the rhythm of it.  She seems to as well, and I think she might finish this one in record time.

The timeline continues to go well.  Both girls really enjoy it and we are up to 20 events now.  When we added "Olmecs of Mesoamerica" to our timeline, Lydia commented that the picture "looks like Daddy! He is sad because he is sitting in time out."  Here is the picture she was referring to:

I thought her observation was hilarious and immediately let Tyler know that he must be an Olmec.

Art:
A few weeks ago I printed out copies of several famous landmarks and am using them for art study for the next few months. We talk about the name of the landmark and then what country it is in.  The girls love it and have already started noticing some of these famous landmarks in their daily lives.  One thing that is funny, though, is that Eleanor has really taken to the Arc de Triomphe.  Not the picture, but just the name of it.  She walks around the house all day saying "Arc de Triomphe!" to herself over and over.  She thinks it is great fun.