Two Straight Lines

"In an old house in Paris

that was covered with vines

lived twelve little girls in two straight lines."

Madeline, by Ludwig Behelmans

Our book for the week!  What better way to start the week than with some M&M math?

Leif did not seem to realize the intended use of the M&Ms.

Although Leif would say that it is his siblings who did not realize the intended use of M&Ms.

PS-They each had a spare candy to represent Miss Clavel.

Week 2 of School

One of the benefits of home schooling is flexibility.  I decided that this week's FIAR book was a little too advanced for the triplets, so we did not do it.  Instead we spent a lot of time on phonics, reading, and memory skills.   They also wrote letters to Alexander (handwriting), drew pictures with the letters (art), and Amelia walked to the post office with me, bought the stamp herself and collected her change (community awareness, street safety).

Micah is the most puzzling of my children.  He flies through the phonics worksheets and knows all sorts of sight words.  Yet he is stubborn and often acts tired unless he is receiving direct one on one attention.  Amelia meanwhile hovers over everyone trying to help with the teaching.  Amelia tries very hard at everything, while the reading seems to come easily to Micah.  Even with the memory work, Micah outpaces his sisters, when he is obedient enough to do the work with me.

We also started attending a co-op this week; it meets every Friday.  The triplets have 3 classes:  Ballet, US States and Capitols,  and Apologia Science: Land Animals.  The science requires a lot of reading during the week, and in class the kids to activities and put together a lapbook.  Nikita is also part of the co-op, she is taking Logic, Health, and High School Art. 

Zachary just stays home wearing his hat:

Actually, Leif goes to co-op and is in the Nursery with other pre-schoolers.  This photo is an excellent example of another home schooling benefit:  brothers bonding and having a blast.

Leif helped me clean up some over our yard area one day, and this led to another science lesson:

Who doesn't enjoy finding a caterpillar?

(His face is dirty from working outside, not bruised.)

This year I think one of my favorite learning tools is our iPad.  It is so nice to put one kid at the table with the iPad while I work with another.  There are so many apps, although I usually stick to the inexpensive short versions.  A favorite this week has been BOB books, as well as some spelling and sight reading apps. We also have a Montessori math app that helps them with counting.

Next week we will be reading and learning from Madeline, it should be an adventure!

Week 1 of School

I have decided this week was "Guinea Pig" week, because it was pretty experimental as far as getting the year going.  It would have been impossible to jump into the week wholeheartedly, because Dante did not have school Monday or Friday, and V was here Wednesday through Friday.  Add in a whole lot of ripe tomatoes that need to become salsa or sauce, and it was school in fits and pieces.

One wonderful thing about this week was that neither Amelia, Sunny, nor Micah asked why they were not going to school with Dante!!  I thought for sure they would be begging to go to the same classroom they had last year.  Not once did they question doing work with me.  Amelia did well with her phonics worksheets, but I they were one thing that did not get done with Sunny or Micah.

We are using Five in a Row as our main curriculum.  The idea is to read the same book each day for 5 days, but learning something new from it each time.  I have a manual with a list of books, and many, many ideas for each day.

Our first book was The Story About Ping. Vocabulary and hand-writing was the first day.  Next Jamie did some science with the kids by experimenting with what floats and sinks.  

Then we talked about family, and counted out how many siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins they each have. 

To show their work, each child is creating a "Lap book" or "Fold n Learn" to add items to each day.  Since this was an unusual week, we did not get to the sequencing mini-booklet we were going to make and glue in.  (Maybe over the weekend we will add that.)  Today was the final day of reading, so as I read the book I would leave out a word and see if one of the kids would fill it in.  Amelia was on top of that!  I also asked them what was going to happen next when I turned the pages.
 

Some other things we did not get to from the manual are art-- discussing the style of the illustrator, and geography.  I briefly touched on China and the river, paging through a book from the library, but it was not very in depth.  Also I was given a corresponding cookbook and Scriptural book that have ideas for each weeks' book.  For example, we could have eaten rice cakes because they are mentioned in the book, or had a discussion on Bible verses that mention obedience.

However, I have no regrets about how this week went.  Well, maybe one.

I did learn that if Kimberly is on the move, the cutting, pasting, writing, and coloring needs to be done at the table!

Tomorrow is September 1st, so each kid will start keeping a daily calendar.  We will count each day and discuss what came before and what comes after.  We will also start a chart of how many school days we have done.  Next Friday is the first day of co-op.  The kids are signed up for US geography (history), Apologia Land Animals (science), and Ballet (gym).  I will go through their classes with them while Kimberly and Leif are in the co-op nursery.  Should be fun!

Zachary and Nikita are also hard at work already.  I have been giving them a math test each day to see where they need to start, but Jamie is overseeing their Literature and History.  We do need to also start science and Spanish.

God is good!