Strong and Good

We just finished up our second week of school. This week, in addition to our reading, math and handwriting work in the afternoon, we added a Five in a Row book in the mornings. Addie is joining us for this part of our school day. We start each morning with a Bible story and then add another day to our calendar and adjust our weather wheel (mostly to "cold" this week). After we have finished these activities, we read our Five in a Row book and work on some sort of planned activity.

Our first book this year was They Were Strong and Good by Robert Lawson. We are still finishing up the second volume of FIAR from last year. On Monday, we talked about our family and made family trees together. My kids love the Jesse Bear books by Nancy White Carlstrom and I found a copy of Climb the Family Tree, Jesse Bear! that went along nicely with our lesson.

Tuesday, we learned about italicized words and made drawings of the Eliza Jane Hopper, a ship mentioned (and italicized) in the story. I also started a vocabulary notebook for Aidan with new words we learned from the book.

For art, on Wednesday, we talked about symbols and Aidan made a poster with symbols for each member of our family. These included a gear, a princess, a pink scribble, a bunch of machinery parts and a cooking pot. Can you guess which one he feels is representative of me?

For science, on Thursday, we learned about honey bees. We found a great series from the library called Real Readers. Honey Bees by Sharon Kahkonen was just the right amount of information for my kids. I find that sometimes science books are either too simple or too complicated; but, this one was just right! I am skipping the math lessons for FIAR this year because we are using Math U See daily. On Fridays, we are working out of some health workbooks I found for the kids. This week we learned about the five senses.

For our afternoon work, we finished learning about short vowel sounds and moved onto consonants this week. Aidan has informed me that he is already well aware of all that I am teaching him and would like to move on as quickly as possible. So much for a review! We finished up the second lesson of Math U See this week. We are still basically reviewing counting and writing numbers. Aidan has a great grasp on what we're learning, so I'm using these review lessons as a time to practice listening, following directions and doing what you're asked. These tasks are much more difficult for my buddy than counting and writing. I'm loving our handwriting book. I've noticed big changes in his handwriting and posture in just the two weeks we've been working. There are so many different handwriting books out there; but, I feel we made a really good choice.

We also had time for painting, cooking, singing and crafting together. We made these fun Numeral Sun Catchers from an idea I found in Easy Math Art by Cecilia Dinio-Durkin, a book I picked up at a library book sale. The number (3) is a little tough to make out; but, they're in there! We also joined up with our church mom's club for the first time this year. The kids seemed to really have fun in the childcare room and I had a great time socializing with old and new friends -well, except for the "Getting to Know You Game". I, as a personal rule, hate "Getting to Know You Games". It's not that I don't want to get to know you. I just don't want to play the game.