Our First Week

I am pleased to report that we all survived (and...I dare say...even *enjoyed*) our first week homeschooling. We focused mainly on the FOUR R's this week: reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, and rules.

READING: I started the week with the intention of having Grace choose two different books to read each day. I quickly discovered that it was better to have her repeat the same two books each day to build fluency (& confidence). This week's selections were "Mr. Putter & Tabby Walk the Dog" and "Mr. Putter & Tabby Catch the Cold" by Cynthia Rylant. These were also a big hit with Emma, who's happy to be doing "preschool homeschool"...she's been asking me when we were going to start school for a couple of months now. We also added in some Nora Gaydos books and a few selections from "Reading Literature: The Primer" by Harriette Taylor Treadwell and Margaret Free, available online at The Baldwin Project. This led to some interesting discussions, particularly when we read "The Old Woman and the Pig." You just don't see too many children's stories talking about hanging a butcher these days. But I digress...

'RITING: For copywork, we used "The Golden Rule" and the moral "Slow and steady wins the race." The latter came back to haunt me as I tried to hurry her up while she was brushing her teeth, etc. Let's just say that she could give Prissy from "Gone With the Wind" a run for her money (pardon the pun). We also started working on cursive letters a and c.

'RITHMETIC: Ahhh...just when you think you have it all planned out.... So, my original idea was to combine Singapore Math with Rod & Staff. Singapore for the mind-stretching mental math; R&S for the drill. The first day the drill was met with *some* enthusiasm; the second day the eye-rolling began. When I inquired about the source of her discontent, Grace (very politely) told me that she wanted to work on something she didn't already know. Since my main objective was to increase the speed of recall, I've decided to ditch R&S drill in favor of some math card games & MathShark. So on day 3, she's already diggin' the MathShark. :) And...since those who know me know that I can't leave well enough alone (think Sally ordering at a restaurant from "When Harry Met Sally"...yes, I'm showing my age), I've decided to now combine Singapore with Horizons. Why Horizons? I think Grace may do better with the spiral approach. I should receive my Horizons 2 order at the end of next week, so we'll focus on games till then.

RULES: We started our first day of school by going over our house rules and reading "The Golden Rule" by Ilene Cooper. Each week I plan to focus on one of the rules in our list. It always makes a bigger impression if I have books, etc. to *back-up* what I'm saying. Then it's not just a "because I said so" type thing.

OTHER: This summer we went to the "Walking With Dinosaurs-LIVE" show, so it seemed like a great time to do a unit study on dinosaurs. We spent some time this week reading more dino books, doing a dino dig, going to the "Colossal Fossils" exhibit at the Pacific Science Center, and working on our dinosaur lapbook/scrapbook. Since we are what you'd call "girly girls," our dino dig took place on the patio table on our deck in moon sand. Not exactly authentic by any means, but lots of fun nonetheless.

Well, that just about sums things up for our first week. Be sure to check out this week's most quotable quote & memorable moment on the scrapbook pages above.

Credits: Created using Photoshop Elements 5.0; Bookworm Mega Kit by Gina Cabrera; Shmootzy alpha brushes by Nancie Rowe Janitz; Swirled photo borders by Heather Ann Melzer; Torn edge by Anna Aspnes; Note paper by Katie Pertiet; Big circle brush by Jackie Eckles; Evergreen Eclectic Academy logo created by me. :)