Lenten beginnings

Yesterday marked the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday. We went to the evening service where we shared a meal and then had the imposition of ashes- something that Sweet Pea liked and Little Bird was very unsure of.
Today we began setting up some of our Lent stuff- we have the cross for going over the six Sundays of Lent on our table now- although it still needs a purple ribbon tied around the middle.

We also got a Resurrection set- it's out right now so we can see it, even though it's unseasonable. I'd debating putting it away until Easter or covering it with a purple cloth- we'll see.


Also pictured, although it's not specifically Lenten, is our devotional line up. One top are two of Luther's Small Catechism, then a Bible, then Luther's Family Devotions, a copy of the Lutheran Service Book, and then the new Treasury of Daily Prayer.


School is continuing as normal, too. We started Singapore's Primary 1A this week- I am really, really glad that I got the Home Instructor's Guide. The first lesson was just numbers 1-10- and me cutting out about a million flash cards- but I think we'll enjoy this as much or more then we did Earlybird Mathematics.

Also completed now is Cursive First. It's important to note that it's our second time through, and I believe our last. We'll keep it around for Little bird when she's ready, and for review as needed for Sweet Pea, but it's a great feeling to be finished with handwriting instruction for now! Yay, Sweet Pea!

We're one week in on the great seed project, but so far none have popped a seedling above the surface yet. Still anxiously waiting!

Otherwise, all is good.

Week 24? 23?

I was looking at my binder and apparently this is NOT week 24. It's 23. oops!
Anyway, that embarrassing gaffe aside, the week is going well.
We did page 46 in Cursive First- almost done! Sweet Pea's assignment was writing her name 6 times, neatly, so you'll have to excuse the lack of pictures on that. ;)

We finished Earlybird Math today! Yay! We'll spend the rest of the week reviewing ordinal numbers, money, time, and easy story problems, then next week we'll begin lesson one of Primary Mathematics. I sat down last night with my planner, anticipating the need to map it all out- only to find that in the Home Instructor's Guide it's all been done for me. What a nice feeling! We'll be using the Instructor's Guide, the textbook, and the workbook. We'll also continue to supplement with Math Mammoth's 1st grade materials.


Another spelling test today from McGuffey's. I think that's going to be a good way to watch how she's forming her letters while I decide if handwriting will continue as a subject, or just a part of other work.

I think that what confused me last post on what week we are on is that we are working through week 24 in Writing with Ease. Somehow we got ahead.


Tomorrow I think we'll get in some science and history, and more phonics. Not having actual math to work on will open up a good chunk of our school time!

Week 24, great beginning!

I know that I said not too long ago that we'd be taking a hiatus from scheduled schooling. Apparently, it's not yet time. Taking that part of the schedule away actually led to more chaos and stress during the day, so back at it we are!
We started the morning with Spelling Workout. I am definitely not continuing this next year, but it seems wasteful to not use what we have, as long as Sweet Pea doesn't hate it. She's amenable, so we're still chugging along.


After that we worked on Earlybird more. We did two of the three money lessons, and I think tomorrow we'll do the third. That leaves the review pages and we'll be done! I will say that workbook pages make a poor substitute with money- we have a Melissa and Doug set of play money that I brought out and that made much more sense. We'll continue using that to play store- I think that's the best way to do money at this age.

We did the first part of week 24 in our writing program. 12 more weeks and we're finished with this, too!

Sweet Pea did a page from Cursive First next. We are almost finished with this, as well. I'm not sure what the best tactic is at that point- this is the second run through of all the pages, and I don't really want to be doing a third. I don't know if we should just let a handwriting program go for now, or look for another one, or just correct penmanship in the course of other Language Arts work. I also don't know physically how much neater her writing can get at this age- she is still five.

Later today we'll do the Ordinary Parent's Guide and catechism, and that'll round out the day.

Sweet Pea's new book that she is reading to herself (with help as needed) is Little House on Rocky Ridge.

Daily reporting

We started the day with more writing. At this point we're doing all the pages, but I feel like I'm ticking down time until we've finished it and we can try something else.

I'm thinking of pulling back out a few pages of Cursive First- mainly for a few, select capital letters. All of her lower case ones are formed properly, in the proper order, but a few capitals keep throwing her for a loop.

Earlybird math is going well- and almost finished! Sweet Pea did lesson 14 today. She had a case of the wiggles that initially interfered with her doing work I knew that she was fully capable of, but once she settled down she did a great job.


Today in science we learned all about two different groups of trees- needle leaf trees and broadloaf trees. I have been having Sweet Pea read the lesson, then we talk about it together, and then she works through the questions at the end semi-independently. Some of it she needs more help with- which makes sense considering we jumped right into second grade science.
Part of her work today was drawing six things made from wood- she drew a ruler, a pencil, a door, a china cabinet, a chair and something that I can't make out. I'm sure it's wooden, though. ;)
We have started listening to movies in French, with English subtitles. I still haven't gotten a French program, so we're cruising solo on that for right now. I need to sit down and pick 100 or so words to start with and begin working them into our daily repetoire. I don't know if I'll focus on writing right away, or not, but I would like to introduce phrases and nouns.

Week 11

Hard to believe that it's already week 11! Although, I then look back and what we've accomplished and what Sweet Pea has learned, and it seems more reasonable.

Latin: Continued review of Chapter 1 vocab. I think that Sweet Pea has all the vocab down, so perhaps tomorrow we will work on the questions in the workbook. I'm very glad for now that we decided to do lessons over two weeks. It's very low key this way and allows my continued focus to be on the core subjects.

Math: Today we did a page from Earlybird 2B (Lesson 4) and then two pages from Math Mammoth: Addition 1. I had picked this up months ago from CurrClick, and then did nothing with it. Sweet Pea is continuing her rapid pace through our Earlybird books, and I'm wrestling with whether or not we should be jumping right into Primary Mathematics 1A. So, on the suggestions of a few homeschoolers with older kids I brought Math Mammoth back out to solidify math facts and give myself time to figure out how to proceed. So far, Sweet Pea really likes it. She told me this morning that, "I love math. It's fun!" Obviously this should be a sign to me that I'm doing something right and to settle down, but that's easier said then done for me.

Grammar: More proper nouns. Sweet Pea did a great job writing the enrichment activity- but no picture today- it includes her first, middle, and last name- as well as our town and state!

Writing: Week 11 in this. Today was copywork which is something that I'm now having her do independantly and then I check it. She also did review in Cursive First today- the letters h and k, both lower case.

Later today will be another phonics lesson, then catechism and memory work.

Weekly Report

No daily reports this week- we were busy! Instead I have a lump weekly one. Sorry!

Language Arts: We did the ninth week of Writing with Ease. Sweet Pea is doing well with copy work and narration. The story of the week was E.B. White's classic Charlotte's Web.
This worked really well because both of my children absolutely adore Charlotte's Web. I'm using the student pages included with Writing With Ease- I've seen a lot of complaints that the lines are huge for this age, and I agree that they are larger then those we use for handwriting. It doesn't seem to bother Sweet Pea, though, and she loves the little graphics on the pages. So I just write the sentence in cursive for her to copy. It's been good for my handwriting, as well, having to make such a careful example.
We completed Chapter 9 of Spelling Power. I don't know how I'm feeling about this program. I keep having these thoughts about language arts. I'm not sure why. Sweet Pea can do it, and it's at her level. But I don't know if it's really teaching her spelling, or if she retaining it, or if I even need to expect that at this level. Who knows! Not this mama.
First Language Lessons is going well. Grammar seems pretty basic and simple at this point, and Sweet Pea is starting to be able to accurately pick nouns out of both verbal and written sentences, and can usually differentiate between common and proper nouns. There is a LOT of review built into this, which is good in that I don't have to think of any examples and bad because I'm one of those people who doesn't like to skip things. Chug along!
We didn't do a lot of bookwork for phonics this week, instead Sweet Pea and I just read together. It was nice to see where she was outside of the workbook, and I think will make the next round of digraphs more appealing.
Handwriting is going well now that we've resumed Cursive First. I really do love this program- it's so easy and so perfect to tailor. No doubts about this subject!


Math: Singapore Earlybird 2b is going just as well as 2a and it's predecessors. We also brought back out the tangrams and both Sweet Pea and Little Bird had a great time forming pictures with the shapes.


Tomorrow will be the big science and history day. Monday we spent the day with a delightful gaggle of children (and their mothers). Storytime was unfortunately canceled this week, so we did our own stories at home.
Next week is week 10- the first week of the new quarter! It will be pretty similar to this quarter, except I'm planning on introducing Prima Latina. Yay!

Daily reporting continued + pie!

Not pictured but also done today was Spelling First. I'd like to do some extra lessons in spelling, phonics and grammar to get to where I thought we'd be in my preplanning. If we don't we don't, but it's a nice goal, isn't it?


I restarted the phonograms from Cursive First. I had been just correcting Sweet Pea's handwriting as we went, but I'm seeing now that what she really needed was just a few minutes at a time of practicing individual letters and sound combinations again. I was really inspired by Hunt Classical Academy and how great her son's handwriting is. So here we are again. Good news is that sheets that 6 months ago met a lot of resistance and whining now are easy and quick and joyfully done.


We finished Earlybird 2A yesterday so today we began Earlybird 2B! Sweet Pea was very excited to have a new book.


Today we finished Chapter 2 of Story of the World. Obviously about Egyptian mythology. I saw some interesting parallels with the Cain and Abel story we talked about last week. I'm pretty sure this is NOT a traditional Egyptian coloring scheme.


We are eight weeks in! That means we're almost one quarter finished with our school year! I can't believe how fast it's whizzing by.


And just because this turned out really well and a lot of other blogs I read have been talking about pie lately- this is a panless apple pie. It was SO good and very easy to make.

Handwriting practice- and a good lesson. :) I can't get over how much it's improved!

more reading babble

We've now covered all of the sounds in the First Grade phonics kit, so I'm just spending some review time and finishing the stories. Sweet Pea is getting much more fluid in her reading.
I think that we're going to spend some time finishing the McGuffey's Primer before moving on to the second grade kit. We've been letting it slide a little and this will be a great opportunity to catch up.
For handwriting we've begun Memoria Press's cursive copybook. I'd originally intended to use it this fall but then I sat down and actually LOOKED at how much I had for the fall for Language Arts- and realized it was too much. Way, way too much. I have First Language Lessons, Writing With Ease, and Spelling Workout. All of those require handwriting in varying amounts, as does history.
So since we've finished Cursive First we'll chug through this for the rest of the summer.

Mostly artwork

This is a dragon with the four of us- mommy and daddy at the bottom, Little Bird flying through the air, and Sweet Pea on the dragon.

This is possibly the coolest fish I've ever seen.

Charlotte from Charlotte's Web. She's spinning a web in case it's unclear. We're reading the book outloud together.

It says, "The dragon saw the princess." I'm so pleased that cursive is going well.

Sick day

For mama, not the kids.
Because I was too sick to take them to church we did some cleaning and homeschooling.
Sweet Pea did more handwriting- review on letters a, d, c, o, t, n, f, e, and l. We also did some counting on the abacus- practicing from 1-100 and then counting by 10s.
Once she's secure on that we'll start counting by 5s and then 2s.

Happy Brithday Little Bird!

Little Bird is 2! Happy birthday!


We've started the spelling lists from McGuffey's Eclectic Speller. Sweet Pea doesn't know all the cursive letters yet, but her handwriting has markedly improved since we began Cursive First.


I am so glad that we got pattern blocks- they are so fun for the girls!

Sweet Pea's vision of spring, complete with a hard to see but happy kitty on the hill.

Some of her handwriting. We've recently begun cursive with Cursive First. Sweet Pea writes manuscript pretty well and is enjoying cursive.