homeschooling, week 2

Wow, we are really doing this! We finished our second week of homeschooling. I am really enjoying the flexibility homeschooling allows us.  In my mind I saw us working for a set time every morning and doing everything else afterwards.  This week didn’t quite work out that way.

One day this week I had a friend come over around 8am, to do my niece’s hair for picture day. Long story, but my brother and his daughter recently relocated to Oregon and are living with us while he starts his new job and looks for a place for them.  I can’t braid to save my life so I called in a friend and she was so sweet to come over and hook my niece up. My friend and her daughter ended up staying for a play date, so that day we did our calendar work before they arrived, and we did our math and grammar work after.

On Wednesday’s, my little guy has occupational therapy at 10am, so we did our calendar work and reading lessons before he and I had to leave. Half the days we did both math AND reading, but the math lessons are getting longer and she reads at an advanced level for her age so the reading is really just for review. If we have to skip something, I opt to skip the reading lesson. She reads plenty each day on her own, so that is good enough for me!

In math this week we learned about 5 & 3, and, 5 & 4. The point is for her to recognize a group of 5 plus any number 1-5 and knowing instantly what it is. There is a really cute song that goes along with it and helps reinforce the concept. We also make 5 & 3 (or whatever number we are doing in the exercises) with tally sticks, our fingers, on the abacus, and by tapping. My daughter struggles with recognizing the amount of taps. I’m not sure how vital this is to her learning the material.  Tomorrow we will learn that 5 & 5 is ten. Then I think we will do review and math games for the rest of the week while she gains mastery.

using the abacus (i guess this picture speaks for itself!)

making the tower as seen in our lollipop logic book
and yes, we had school in our pj's this day!

The reading lessons are going over final blends. I am so happy with my daughter’s reading ability.  I know some think you should teach reading right away and others think you should wait.  We really just gave her the tools and helped her when she asked and over the summer her reading skills just blossomed.  I love hearing her little voice read me a book.

I decided to start First Language Lessons wit her. We did three lessons this week. The first lesson we learned about nouns and the second lesson we learned about common nouns. Sanji can only remember that a noun is a person. When I have asked her this week, she said “A noun is a person, a flower, a sun, a book……..”.  The third lesson was reading her a poem that she will work on memorizing this week and then will recite it for our family.

Sanji also takes piano lessons, once a week for 45 minutes easy. Her piano teacher is delightful.  She is warm and bubbly and gentle but really knows hot to keep Sanji going.  Her teacher came out to speak with me for about 15 minutes after Sanji’s last lesson.  She told me that she is continuing to learn very quickly and that is is going to start becoming more challenging.  I’m going to sit in on her lessons once a month so that I understand what she is learning and that way I can better support her at home.

On Thursday, Sanji will begin a class at a local homeschool education center, Village Home.  They have an amazing selection of classes for preschool up to adults.  You can become a member or take classes as a non-member.  Since we are only signing up for once class, the membership option doesn’t make financial sense for us, bit it something we will consider in the future.  She is taking Magic Tales Theater, it’s like a drama class for 5-7 year olds.

Our first science co op group meets tomorrow too. I’m really looking forward to meeting other homeschool families, and hopeful that Sanji can make some new friends to play with regularly.