Week 7

This week was pretty standard, except that I did have an ER run with Adelaide that kept us both out until 3:30 in the morning.  Since Tyler is on his surgery rotation, I thought it would be better if he got sleep.  Unfortunately, this made me incredibly tired all day, so at least one day was pretty useless.  But we still managed to get some school done, even if the house did get trashed!  And Adelaide is doing much better now, so we just keep trucking along.

Math:
We did pages 121-136 in Essentials A.  This week we continued to cover size comparisons and started weights.  I'm excited that Lydia is almost done with A, as my goal was to finish it this year, not two months after we started it!  I've been amazed with how well she is learning new concepts, and she's definitely exceeding my expectations.  I'm thinking we'll just start Essentials B when she finishes A.  I'm sure this will slow her down a bit, because it is supposed to be at a higher difficulty level.

Miquon is still going well.  We went back and did some of the lab sheets we already completed, mostly because I think she still has a little bit to go before I feel comfortable using the rods to teach her concepts.  She is really enjoying it so far, and I'm finding that I am not having as difficult a time teaching it as I thought I would.  So far I've had to tweak most of our school work to Lydia's unique way of learning, so Miquon works because it is built to be a tool, not necessarily a set of step-by-step lessons.  So I guess you could say that I'm still feeling the Miquon love.

Reading:
We're still working on reading through all the OPGTR sentences up to Lesson 40 via my homemade readers.  Lydia's attention span for reading is pretty low, so we're only getting a few minutes done a day, but she continues to do well.

Memorization/Calendar:
Calendar is the same as usual and we started a new poem.  Lydia is now working on "The Falling Star."  It is longer than Lydia's last poem, so it may take us a bit longer.  We are also reviewing all her other memory work almost daily.

Harvest Time:
I decided to make this its own section in my Weekly Report.  I'm a little off on this one because our week for this curriculum is Thursdays-Wednesdays.  Because of the activities we do outside our house, this schedule makes the most sense for us time-wise.

This last week we talked about where milk comes from and read a book about Heifer International giving a goat to a little girl's family. We also read a different book about the process of getting milk from the cow to our home.  Then, as our activity, we made bread and butter.  I tried to let the girls help with the bread and they enjoyed watching the bread kneed.  As anyone who knows our family can attest, I am definitely not the baker in the family, so I wasn't sure how our bread would turn out, but it was pretty good!

Then the curriculum guide suggests you let the children do a "butter battle."  Basically you put cream in a container for the child to shake while you let the mixer make butter, and see who wins.  Well, I knew the "battle" part wouldn't work, but I thought I'd let the girls try to make butter in a jar.  Very quickly I moved them outside to the grass because their jars kept dropping on the ceramic tile (although luckily didn't break).  Both girls lost interest after about 30 seconds, so that was a flop too.  We came inside and I poured their cream in the Kitchen Aid and they watched it turn into butter.  Success!

They also enjoyed eating the bread and butter that they helped make.  Lydia kept saying, "Mmm, this is good bread!"

Miscellaneous:
Lydia did pages 6-12 in Color, Count, and Cut.  We talked about our Renoir prints, and although Lydia can now successfully name all the ones that have English names, she's having difficulty remembering the French ones.  Makes sense.  We also continue to listen to Debussy on a regular basis, although lately Lydia has wanted to listen to Adele instead. :)

Week 6

We didn't get a whole lot of school done this week, although we did do some.  We had a birthday this week and that, combined with a playdate at our house, made our week pretty hectic.

Math:
We did pages 115-120 in Essential Math A.  We're working on comparison words like longer, taller, shorter, etc.  She was struggling with it at first, but is starting to get it.  I love seeing her learn a concept she didn't understand before.
A week or so ago, I can't remember, we were working on place names like 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  Lately she's been telling me things that go in order.  She'll say, "Lydia is first, Ellie is second, and Adelaide is third!"  I'm happy to see her applying things to life.

The kitchen table ready for Lydia to start school!

Since we stopped doing MEP Reception, I decided we'd pick up Miquon Orange, which I have but have just been waiting to start for some reason.  It is a fairly intimidating curriculum, because it isn't written for parent educators.  There aren't lesson plans, or even a regular set of worksheets and problems.  It is also a very unusual approach to math.  After spending many hours studying it and learning about its methods, I was still nervous to start.  I wasn't even sure if its approach would even mesh with Lydia.

Well, it is going really well!  Miquon relies heavily on the use of Cusineaire Rods, and in order to use them to teach concepts, a child has to be familiar with them.  We've owned ours for several months and I let Lydia play with them regularly.  We did the first few lab sheets from the Orange book, and Lydia went from not having a clue which rod corresponded to which number, to now knowing about 70% of them.  As we were working on it, I could see how this would really help a child internalize a lot of math concepts, and I'm excited to continue.  And Lydia loves it so far too!

Reading:
We're through Lesson 40 in OPGTR.  Well, that is, she's read words from each.  She hasn't read all of the assigned sentences from the lessons yet, so we aren't going to move on until she does.  Lesson 40 is the end of Section 3 in the book, so it is a good stopping point.  So far she can read all standard cvc words, the sight words "the," "I," and "a" (which give her more trouble than you would think), the sound "qu" and "s" as the sound "z" as in "has" or "as."  We're going to pause for a bit and work on fluency with these concepts before moving on.

Memorization/Calendar:
Same as usual.  We didn't add anything new yet.  Although I did take a video of Lydia saying all of her memorization (minus the geography).  She lost interest quickly, but if you listen carefully, it is all there.  I promise she knows them.

Miscellaneous:
We finished Bigger Steps and started Color, Count, and Cut, which is the third book in the Rod and Staff series.  We also started looking at our Renoir prints.  We talk about the names of the paintings and we talk about some of the things in the paintings.  We are still listening to our Debussy playlist regularly too.

Trying to Round Out Our Preschool Experience

We are doing great with my current plan for preschool right now.  Lydia loves learning and once we get started with a subject, we often spend 45 minutes or more on it because she wants to keep going.  As I've mentioned, right now we're doing reading, math, and memorization.  I got to thinking about my teaching style and our preschool as it is, and it occurred to me that I'm not a project-doer.  I have never loved doing crafts more than 2 or 3 times a year.  It is just not something I am naturally attracted to.  But when I thought about what preschool should be like, I realized that I want my daughters to be able to do fun stuff like that.

After talking to my husband about it, he agreed.  Most of our memories from early schooling are of fun projects we did, and he especially doesn't want our kids to miss out on those types of experiences.  As a result, I think I'm going to try to follow a preschool curriculum, complete with books, crafts, and fieldtrips.  I could do this on my own, but I think that because I don't really want to do it, it probably wouldn't happen if I had to piece it together.



The curriculum I'm planning on following is the free preschool one over at Wee Folk Art.  It is a waldorfy, seasons-based curriculum, but it appears to be very gentle and the crafts appeal to me.  We are right in time to start the Harvest Time one, too.  My plan is to do week one starting next week.  I already have the books for it from the library even!  I'm not going to do the art appreciation or poems because I already have my own plan for those, but everything else is fair game.  I think I might even attempt the quilt!

Another thing I'm adding in is art appreciation and starting up music appreciation again.  I'm still happy to follow Ambleside Online's classical music appreciation.  This term they are studying Debussy.  I made a playlist of the recommended songs and will be playing it every day while the girls are playing.  For fine art, they are studying Renoir.  I've ordered prints of the 6 paintings and am going to put them on the wall in the playroom so the girls will see them often.  We'll also talk about the paintings' names every day and maybe a little about the individual paintings too.

I'm sure I'll go into detail more as we progress through all this, but this is my new plan!