What We've Been Up To

Well, I sort of stopped bloggging for a bit, but I've been wanting to get back into it, if only for the personal accountability.

A few highlights of the last few months:

Thanksgiving, Daddy had to work so I took the girls last minute to Texas to visit my parents.

Helping Grandpa decorate their Christmas Tree

Christmas was fun, although Daddy had to stay in North Carolina and work again while the rest of us went to visit family in Arkansas.

Cooking with Grandma at Christmas

We also got to see Tyler's sister get married in Las Vegas right after Christmas.

After that trip, we were a bit tired.  Then in February, everyone got sick several times for pretty much the whole month, even Daddy.  And our heat went out downstairs for almost 2 weeks, so we were stuck in our rooms upstairs. Between the two, almost no school got done for the entire month.

March was uneventful and we spent most of the month just enjoying the nice weather and working on our yard.

April was fun. Tyler had a week off and we spent a few days in Washington, DC. We were able to visit a bunch of family and see the sights. I've never really "done" Washington, DC, so I was especially looking forward to the trip. We saw the Natural History and Air and Space Smithsonian Museums and the National Zoo.

Lydia watching the panda playing

They were getting grumpy by the last day. This was the best we could get in front of the Lincoln Memorial

At the end of April, we were able to go to Kansas City and Arkansas to see another one of Tyler's sister's get married.

Our girls don't much like posing for family pictures.

So far in May we were able to go pick strawberries.

Overall, I'd say we've had a good year so far. As for academics, Lydia and Eleanor seem to be progressing nicely...

Math:

In Math, Lydia is doing very well with CLE. It is the perfect fit for her right now and for the foreseeable future. She is on lesson 101, and while I don't think she will finish it before July (which is the beginning of our new year), she won't be too far behind considering we spent the first few months of school doing Saxon and started this one late. 

Eleanor is doing really well with math. She just finished Essential Math B, meaning she is officially done with Kindergarten math and we will be starting 1st grade math in the next few days. I've given it a lot of thought and am going to try Eleanor with the Mathematics Enhancement Programme Year 1. It is a British program that is free online, but I'm using it because it is a really solid, deep program unlike anything I've ever seen. I've never used it before, so I'm going to give it a trial run and see if it is a good fit. If that doesn't work, we'll probably try Math Mammoth, which I have already on hand.  Eleanor is also doing well with Miquon and is almost done with the first level (orange). I plan to continue with it as well and move her to level 2 (red) when she finishes it in the next few weeks.

Reading:

Lydia reads for 20 minutes every day from library books during mandatory reading time, although she reads many other books throughout the day. Even though her reading level and fluency is quite high, she really doesn't like reading chapter books yet and prefers picture books. Too many words on a page overwhelm her still. So for now, she is reading mostly picture books and higher leveled readers. I also have her read to me every day so I can make sure she doesn't forget her phonics. For that I am using the old vintage Treadwell Readers (sort of like the McGuffey readers pioneers used, but I like these better). She has been enjoying the stories and illustrations, and the way they are typed out isn't intimidating to her. This is a fairly recent change in our routine, so we are only about a third of the way through the first reader. At this point, I plan on having her go through all of them until she hits a road block.

Eleanor is doing well with OPGTR. She is on lesson 58 and is learning about her first digraphs like "sh" and "ch". Today she read the sentence, "The dog will catch the stick and bring it back." just to give you an idea of where she is (approximately a mid-first grade level).

Language Arts:

Lydia is still working on the same levels she was in writing, grammar, and spelling. She's powering through.

Eleanor finished her PreK handwriting book and has started HWT Kindergarten. She is very excited to learn how to write and copies lots of what she sees, even if she can't read it. My favorite was a few days ago when she copied "Disney. Made in China." from the back of one of her toys.

Geography:

I recently started Lydia on Evan-Moor Beginning Geography. I thought she would enjoy it and maybe learn a few valuable skills. So far I am correct. It is painless and she has fun doing her one page a day of geography.  Eleanor wants to do it too, but I'm making her wait until she can read a little better.

I'm in the midst of planning for next year since we are only about a month and a half away. It isn't going to be very complicated as we will mostly be continuing what we are already doing, but I will be doing more science and history now. I also plan to make memorization a larger priority this year, so will be working on that. I'll be doing a post on our plans in the next few weeks.

Weekly Report: Week 24

This week was Spring Break for Daddy, so we only did one day of school, but I didn't blog about last week, so this post will just combine them both.

This week, Grandma took the girls to Turpentine Creek, a big cat refuge about an hour from where we live.  Grandma was watching the girls while Tyler and I were in Houston so Tyler could take the Step II medical exam.  The girls had a lot of fun seeing all the animals and told me several of the ones they saw.  I don't have any pictures, although I'll have to see if Grandma took some and maybe I'll share them later.

This week included the first day of Spring!  The girls have been very interested in the seasons the last few months and we talk about the seasons every day as part of calendar time.  They knew Spring was coming up and were looking forward to it.  We decided that to celebrate Spring, we'd put a bird feeder up in our backyard.  The girls really enjoyed that, although we haven't seen any birds at it yet.

Math:
We started subtraction in Essential Math.  So far, so good.  Lately Lydia has wanted to color every page we do, so school has been lasting a lot longer, but it is fun and she enjoys it more.  She seems to be understanding the idea that "minus" means "take away," which is definitely an important concept to start with.

Reading:
We will finish up "sh" words tomorrow.  There were two "sh" lessons in OPGTR and a lot of sentences to get through, but she seems to have a pretty solid grasp on it.  We'll be starting "ch" this week.  Oh, and we've been doing almost all our work on the whiteboard the last while, instead of the iPad.  For some reason it is working better right now.   I'm all for whatever works, though.

Memorization:
Lydia is still working on "The Rainbow."  She is also learning even more geography.  The countries that she can identify on the map number in the 30s to 40s now.  She is almost to the point of being able to identify more than me, which is both sad for me and awesome for her.  It is amazing what a geography puzzle app will do.  I also bought her the Barefoot World Atlas App in an effort to help her learn more about the different countries than just their locations.  It is probably a little advanced for her, but she enjoys playing with it and it is a very well-done little app and I look forward to using it in the future.  Now if only I could find a good children's anatomy app...

Handwriting:
We're working through HWT every day we do school now.  So far, Lydia has learned E, L, and F.  We also practice the letters of her name every day in capital letters.  Eleanor has been doing handwriting most days with us, although instead of the HWT workbook or letters, she is doing pre-writing pages from ebooks I own that I print off for her.  Oh, and she plays with Lydia's HWT chalkboard a lot too.

Now that Eleanor wants to be included, school is lasting almost two hours between the two of them.  They have fun, but I'm starting to see what it will be like to juggle my teaching between my girls.  It is going to be an interesting challenge that will keep me on my toes, I have no doubt.