term 2 week 2

August 15-19, 2011

Only 3 for 5 on days again (total count 54) but this week was better than last week.

This week, Sunny and Posy were registered for dance classes and had their first sessions in the studio. They. Loved. It. Sunny has been asking to take ballet since she was 2, and I'm so glad we can finally afford to enroll her (and her sister). The class is a split hour between ballet and tap - they come out to the lobby halfway through to change their shoes. Sunny has her class on Monday, Posy on Tuesday. At the end of her first class, Posy came running out shouting, "Mommy, I did it! I did it!" It's expensive, but one of those things that is worth it when you see how much they enjoy it.

This is their PE for the year. We've decided to not do soccer this fall (Sunny and Posy both did soccer last year - Sunny did well. Not so much for Posy.) because we'd be spread a little too thin with scheduling. Also on a PE note, AC started working out again after taking a break due to a random back injury. He started with the Jillian Michaels 30-Day Shred DVD, and the girls decided to do the "exercise movie" with him a couple of evenings this past week. While he was pushing through all the cardio and with the hand weights, they were jumping around and waving their arms. "Daddy, this is fun!"

Handwriting: Our neighbor Mrs. C, who teaches at the local community college, stopped by one afternoon to help get us moving on handwriting practice. It took quite awhile, but the girls got through it. We're now working on capital and lowercase letters together - both A, both B, etc.

Math: More workbooks, and I'm starting to explain the patterns behind the addition tables. We did 0, 1, and 2 as well as some work with manipulatives.

Reading: The usual of lots of free-reading at the library, Sunny reading out loud, and Posy working on her phonics. I ordered - and got in the mail today - the book The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I'll start using that this next week with both girls. Posy will be starting at the beginning but I expect that she'll move quickly through the beginning. I'll start halfway through with Sunny just to make sure she understands the letter combinations, particularly the vowels.

I randomly grabbed a new Fancy Nancy book from the library and lo and behold, it's a great introduction to poetry! It presents different types of poetry like a limerick and an ode, explains different aspects of poetry like a couplet (which we can now identify no problem), and encourages kids to write their own poems. I'm totally using this book to come up with a little poetry unit. Sunny even dictated to me her own poem -

We planted a garden

And got lots of fruits and vegetables.

We picked them and washed them and ate them.

And that was the end of the garden.