August 22-26, 2011
This week, Posy was off in her own little world but I didn't push her with school. She's still so young that I'll read with her when she wants to (multiple times a day - no concerns about going long stretches with no reading) and let her participate with Sunny as she chooses. But that's it. Sunny, on the other hand - I feel that since she would be in school right now if we'd enrolled her, we need to be more consistent and actually work every day. But we still came up a little short on the week - 4 for 5, but much better than last week all the way around.
Handwriting: Sunny can (mostly) write the entire alphabet, both capital and lower case. The letters need a lot of work to improve her penmanship but she has never liked writing the same letter over and over. So we're shifting to her writing out sentences or lists, and only occasionally with the repetition of a single letter. I write it first and she either traces or copies it. At this point, I don't care which one.
Math: I worked all week with Sunny on telling time. We took down the kitchen clock off the wall and examined it closely, drew clocks on the chalkboard, and talked about what time we do this or that (have dance class, Dad comes home in the evening, etc.) I got blank worksheets here and here and they helped her visualize it a little better. I know a lot of homeschoolers tend to be anti-worksheet, but they're what I'm comfortable with right now and Sunny does seem to catch on to things well when she sees it written down. If she does turn out to be a visual learner like that, she's me all over again. Anyway, she often reverses the hour and minute hands but is doing substantially better than she was on Monday.
Reading skills: Posy did work on her phonics - I get little readers from the library and she's cranking right through them. Yay for reading! Sunny practiced her reading out loud. She's extremely expressive - really over the top and it makes me laugh (silently, so I don't throw her off). But she gets going so fast that you can barely understand her, and she breathes in the middle of a word but doesn't pause so it sounds like she's leaving words out. Like I said, working on it.
Literature: After finding the Fancy Nancy poetry book last week, I got some more poetry books from the library, including the fantastic Shel Silverstein. Sunny likes poetry and read some out loud this week. She also went around reciting a couple of things. Next week, I want to focus on reading with the rhythm and picking some things out with them.
I had intentions this week of working on a science unit and starting history because I got the first "The Story of the World" text and activity book. I'd still like to get them up and running next week, along with some targeted work with poetry ... but we'll see. Depends on my energy level - I've got 5-7 weeks to go in this pregnancy and Mr. Braxton-Hicks has been hanging out the past couple of weeks. Very tiring.
2 comments:
I don't know if it helps, but with clocks (typically and only according to california, utah, idaho state mandates) you start clocks by just the numbers. then the big hand on the number. then you progress to 30 minute segments (just the 6 and the 12). from there you can add 5 minute segments. once they can master counting by fives and recognizing what counting by fives are on a clock you can progress to the minute hand.
I think you are awesome for doing this. good luck!
I love seeing where your girls are because mine are so close in age! I was complaining to my mom yesterday that even though Maddie can very nearly read, she can hardly write. I guess I thought she should be doing that by now, but since I teach college, not preschool, apparently I was a bit ahead of the game! If nothing else, you're giving me ideas. Thanks for sharing!
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