Things are going well here.  I just thought I'd give a little update on where we are in our school.  (Well, not so little, as I just finished typing it all out and it is rather lengthy.)

Five in a Row - this is the "spine" of our homeschool (in other words, what most of our studies are based on).  It is weekly unit studies based on wonderful children's literature.  Much of the work is done orally, but since the children have a mental "hook" in their minds on which to hang the facts they learn (the story is the "hook"), they are more likely to remember what they have learned.

This past week, our unit was on Storm in the Night and this is what we discussed.  We did a different subject each day.

Social Studies - We discussed human relations, in particular, the close and loving relationship between Thomas and his grandfather.  We also discussed the emotions of fear, and how it is normal to experience fear, and that fears can be overcome.  We didn't really do any geography for this week as we placed our "story disk" on Mississippi since we have so many summer afternoon thunderstorms here, and the girls are already very familiar with the name and location of our state.  We've been having great weather for this book this week! 

Language Arts - We discussed what italics were, and why they were used in this story.  We discussed what quotations marks are, and how they are used.  The vocabulary we learned was mandarin (orange colored), bough (branch of a tree) and errand (something that one goes to do).  We also reviewed onomatopoeia, personification and similes, which have all come up in several previous Five in a Row stories.

I was working on Art and also on Science day, so Matt taught those lessons.

Art - They talked about the reflections in the story (in the windows) and how some other smooth, shiny surfaces can reflect also (even how you can see yourself in someone else's eyes if you look closely enough).  They talked about how you can tell which direction someone is looking by the whites of their eyes.  He also discussed with them the contrast in the last picture in the book and how it was used to make a dramatic statement.  He also briefly touched on what a   profile is (the side view of someone's face).

Science - He talked about sources of light such as sun, moon (light reflected from sun), stars, lightning, fire, lightning bugs, moonjellies (we've discussed bioluminescence before), flashlights, light bulbs, etc.  They talked about our five senses and how when certain senses aren't being used, other senses seem more acute.  We also talked about clouds and thunderstorms, and read various books from the library and also from our home library about weather and also about our senses.  Elizabeth even read a few related books on her own.  We read a library book about thunderstorms, and turned off most of the lights.  DH provided special effects for our story with the lights (for lightning), banging on a cookie sheet (for thunder), spritzing us with a water bottle (for rain) and even tossing a bit of crushed ice on us (for hail).  We had a lot of fun with it.  Oh, and he even blew on us for wind. 

Applied Mathematics - We discussed shapes and demonstrated various shapes using a geoboard.  It is basically a peg-type board you use rubber bands on to make a variety of shapes.  We discussed pentagons, hexagons and octagons, as well as reviewed squares, triangles, rectangles, diamonds and parallograms.  We talked a bit about right angles also.

In our Bible/devotional time these past few weeks, we've been sharing from a devotional called Promises for Kids as well as a book called 20 Bible Stories Children Should Know.  That one even has a CD to go along with it.  Our devotionals this week have been about obedience.

In the area of life skills, we are continuing to work on getting the children to help out more around the house.  They are now responsible for folding all the towels, and they are able to empty most of the dishwasher, and to help reload it.  They can also set the table and help prepare drinks and help a tiny bit with meal preparation.

Mathematics

Elizabeth continues in the Math U See Alpha book.  She has mastered +0, +1, and +2, meaning she understands and has memorized those fact families.  She can answer 20 questions in less than 60 seconds (even when she is having to write the answers herself).  Currently we are working on lesson 8, solving for the unknown.  For example, what plus two equals 9?  The goal is for her to master each lesson as she goes, as the lessons build upon each other, and if she has fully mastered addition (including solving for the unknown) subtraction should come easier to her.  The Math U See site has a nice online drill page as well as a worksheet generator that we can use to create more sheets as needed.

This is the scope & sequence for alpha. 

http://www.mathusee.com/pdfs/alphascope.pdf

Math U See teaches using a mastery method instead of a spiral method, meaning the child is expected to fully master each area before moving on to anything new.  It uses blocks as manipulatives and we have heard almost nothing but good things about it.  The only thing is that due to the untraditional scope & sequence, she won't be introduced to some topics until later in the program, but we have bought a few inexpensive workbooks from Sam's so we can make sure she is at least exposed to other areas of math.  Also, she can already tell time to the nearest five minutes, as we did that last year, and of course we teach money here and there as necessary, as well as measurement.  (There is a lot of applied mathematics in Five in a Row as well.)

Katie is about halfway through the Math U See Primer, which does not require mastery.  She already knows most of it, but I feel it is a good gentle introduction to math and I don't believe she is ready for mastery yet.  Elizabeth did the primer last year for kindergarten.  Even though Katie won't be 5 until November, she is doing kindergarten level work as she is ready for it.  After she finishes the Math U See Primer, we will probably work on some other inexpensive and colorful and fun kindergarten math workbooks and wait to start Alpha until she is closer to six, or maybe at least 5 & 1/2 years old.  This week, Katie just finished lesson 14, which is counting & writing the numbers to 20.  She can actually already count to 100, by 1's, 5's & 10's though.

Handwriting 

The girls both continued in Handwriting without Tears.  Elizabeth is writing words and practicing lower case letters.  Katie is working on upper case letters.  We also had Elizabeth do copywork of a few sentences from our Five in a Row story last week.  This is a good opportunity for her to practice writing neatly and be exposed a bit to proper capitalization, punctuation and grammar.

Reading

Science

The Five in a Row science (above) is really pretty complete, but we like science here, so we add extra for our family.  We have an Abeka grade one health reader that we are reading through this year, as well as some Usborne science books that we use when we want to read a bit more about science topics (and of course the library is our favorite resource of all).  We also have a subscription to United Streaming, which is an online resource of educational videos for educators.  The girls watched an episode of The Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm the other day, while Michael watched the Letter Factory video. 

Preschool

Katie is on the next to last book of the Rod and Staff preschool curriculum workbooks.  These are actually used by some of the Mennonite schools as a kindergarten curriculum, as official school does not begin for some of them until first grade.  They teach the basics very well.

http://www.timberdoodle.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=963

Grammar

For grammar, Elizabeth is working through First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind.  Most of this is done orally and there is a lot of memorization and repetition.  Right now, she is learning about proper nouns (and before that learned about common nouns).  She is also memorizing her second short poem, and writing the name of our city and state.

Miscellaneous

Our family does not watch much television at all (we don't even have cable) but the children do enjoy watching Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, Between the Lions (about phonics) and Cyberchase (about math).  They don't necessarily watch them all every day though.  It just depends on how our day goes. 

For chapter book read alouds, we finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary a week or so ago and are currently near the end of the sequel Runaway Ralph.  The girls have really enjoyed listening to Ralph the mouse's adventures.  For reading time, since our children are still very young, I implemented an idea I got from another online homeschooling friend.  We spread a blanket on the floor and get out a quiet toy like bristle blocks or other building-type toys that they can all share, and the only rules are that they have stay on the blanket and they have to be quiet.  I will however ask questions, especially of Elizabeth, now and then to be sure she really is paying attention (and she usually is).

We don't have anything particularly structured for physical education and we are still trying to decide whether we want to enroll the girls in something like gymnastics or dance this year.  They are still so young for us to be always on the go, so we are still thinking about and praying about this.  They both played T-ball but that was a relatively short season.  Last year they took gymnastics in a town about 40 minutes away but the drive got to be too much, and this year due to Elizabeth's age, it would likely have to be in the evening, and rush hour anymore down there is awful.  We do try to take family walks though, and need to incorporate more of these.  My goal lately has been for us (as a family) to get at least 20 minutes of physical activity in, on each day that I am not working.  We've been doing okay on this but have a little bit of room for improvement.

We are about to participate in a "swap" of sorts with Flat Stanleys.  It is based on a book called Flat Stanley about a boy who got squished flat by a bulletin board and all the fun adventures he could have since he was flat and could even go through the mail.  We are in a group of 7 families.  We made our own "Flat Stanley" though the girls have actually done "Flat Care Bears" (Funshine and Friend bear to be exact) and we will send them, along with a journal, to the person who is on the list after us.  Each month, our Flat Stanleys will visit a different family and they will take pictures of them with things that are local to them or their area, and write about it in our journal, while each month, we will have a different "visitor" here that we will host and do the same for.  At the end of the six months, we will have a wonderful journal detailing our Flat Stanley's adventures.

As time allows, we are also working through Home Economics (by the Pearables) (ages 6 & up) with Elizabeth, as well as The ABC's of Money Management for Kids.  And as time allows, Matt has been teaching Elizabeth a bit about the piano, music notes, etc.  We also try to play fun and educational games (both board games and computer games) sometimes.  Most of all, we do a lot of reading around here and visit the library quite often.  After Labor Day, the children's activities at church should resume.

We are all having fun on our homeschooling adventure and learning lots!  Thank you if you read this far!  Feel free to email me if you have any questions about anything.  Have a happy and blessed day.