Weekly Report: Days 7-12

Well, we are only 12 days into school and are already way behind.  Like 2 weeks behind.  Oh well.  Daddy's rotation last month didn't require much of him and he was home almost all day every day, which really threw off our school plans.  I have already learned that I find it very difficult to school when Dad's home.  This month, however, the girls are hardly going to see him he's going to be gone so much, so I'm hoping we'll make up for lost time.

Reading:
Lydia is able to complete a full lesson of OPGTR most days, which is awesome.  A few weeks ago we were only doing about half a lesson a day.  Her speed and attention span are both increasing.  She hasn't really had any problem picking up all the new material I've been throwing at her.  She has finished through Lesson 80 and is on the review lessons for Section 7 right now!  One word in particular I was impressed with because it required so much of her and she got it right away: "strange."  It has a 3 consonant blend, long "a", silent "e", and alternate "g" sound, but she didn't bat an eye at it. 

We also finished Little House in the Big Woods as a read aloud.  I started Stuart Little and a few chapters in the girls were begging for more Little House, ("Stuart Little is not my favorite!") so I decided to ditch Stuart Little for now and do Little House on the Prairie instead.  I think Lydia and Eleanor like it because it is about three sisters, just like them.  Regardless, I'm glad that they are excited about listening to a book.  They are also in love with the My First Little House books. We owned one already that I got from Goodwill, but I've ordered more for Eleanor's birthday coming up.  In the meantime, we've been checking out as many as I can find at the library. 

Lydia and Adelaide "reading" on the couch in the playroom.  I took the picture through the glass door so I wouldn't disturb them, thus the glare.  Adelaide has recently started really enjoying looking at books.

Math:
Math is going as well as always.  We are doing about a page or two of math every day.  We did have a big win with one of the games in Math Mammoth called "Some Went Hiding."  It is a very simple game, but Lydia and Eleanor loved it.  Basically I took 5 objects (because we were practicing addition facts for 5) and told Lydia to close her eyes.  Then I took away a few.  When she opened her eyes, she had to tell me how many I stole.  That's all there is to it, but Lydia and Ellie played it for a good half hour and Lydia almost has her facts within 5 down.  I let Ellie play by helping me "steal" the objects while Lydia closed her eyes.  It was lots of fun all around!

Spelling:
Lydia is almost done with Lesson 8 in All About Spelling.  She's doing really well, but for some reason always struggles with "an" and "am" words.  She always wants to make the "a" an "i".  I think this may because of how we pronounce them, although we definitely pronounce words like "jim" and "jam" differently.  Oh well, it will just take practice, I guess.

Memorization:
The 4th Article of Faith is proving difficult for her, but she's starting to get it.  Another few days and she'll have it down.  In the meantime, we continue to add to our timeline of the world and now she is up to the Phoenicians, which means that she has 16 items on it already!  The girls really like doing the timeline and it has already proven valuable.  I try to make connections for them as much as possible when things come up that match the timeline.  So far that mostly means we talked about religious/Old Testament things like Joseph's dad in "Joseph: King of Dreams" as a "Patriarch of Israel" or things like that.  As we progress farther through time, I imagine we'll be able to make even more connections.

History:
I'm not really doing history as a subject, exactly, this year, but we do have some history resources that we are using (besides the timeline of the world):  The Story of the World: Volume One audio cd and Liberty's Kids dvds.  Story of the World covers from prehistory to the fall of Rome and Liberty's Kids is a cartoon that covers the American Revolution in 40 episodes.  I've been really impressed with it so far and even I've learned things.  We mostly watch it as we drive around town (we spend about an hour in the car every day).  The girls have watched the entire series one and a half times now, and "Doctor Franklin" (Benjamin Franklin) is one of Eleanor's favorite characters.  I'm not sure they get much out of it yet, but Eleanor, especially, loves it a lot.  I expect we'll use it quite a bit in the future.