November 21, 2011

Well, I noticed it has been a while since I have posted so I thought I would get a quick one in now.  Things here have been quite busy.  We have pushed forward with our schooling and we are also getting over colds.  We are mostly over them now, just in time for Thanksgiving (Yay!).

School is going pretty well these days.  We are now starting our school day off with read-aloud time.  We are currently reading two books from the Mother West Wind series.  One is the Where book and the other is the Granny Fox book.  We are almost finished with them and have really enjoyed both books.

After reading about three chapters of our book, we read from Leading Little Ones to God.  We are also going through a booklet from our church children's program that has scripture reading and memorization and also some other related stories.  We just recently started this and I think we're really going to enjoy it.

Next, we do our memory work and after that we do phonics.  We are actually doing four phonics lessons in one sitting on most days now.  Now that the boys are reading so well, we have stepped up the pace a bit.  We do two review lessons and then we do two new lessons.

After phonics we move to the kitchen island to do math.  Sometimes they sit while I teach something using the chalkboard.  Other times I sit in the middle with a son on each side of me while we work through problems.  After math we do reading and penmanship.  One of them works on his writing while the other one reads to me and then they trade places.

It is currently taking us about 2 hours to go through everything.  I am contemplating when to start adding other subjects and time, ramping up slowly towards more of a 1st grade work load.  I think I will probably start adding other subjects after the new year, but I have not made a final decision yet and I still have some things to purchase.  We will eventually be adding history, geography, literature, grammar, writing composition, science and art....I think that's it.  It sounds like a lot but it will all be at a very age appropriate level.  Grammar and writing composition start out very slow and gentle and take very little time for 1st graders.  I will wait to add that in until we are finished with phonics, which would be sometime in the spring (last time I checked).  The two subjects together would take less than we currently spend with phonics so that won't be a problem.  I still have to work out a schedule and figure out where we might be able to multi-task.

Anyway, that's school.  Right now, all of our subjects are coming along quite nicely and it is very rewarding to see the results.

In other news, I have to be quick now because I am getting sleepy.  My mom has been falling a lot lately so we are trying to figure what is making her do this.  She is fortunate that she has not broken something already.  Thankfully we have a very good RN and a very good doctor in the family to help.  I hope we get to the bottom of it soon because this falling thing is very scary.

The weather here is finally getting cool enough to require jackets on some days, such as today.  Dancer has been begging to go outside every day but I'm not feeling to badly about it because he was just so so skinny when we finally got him back home again.  Little Tinkerbell is not so little anymore.  She is growing up quickly but she still acts ALL kitten, including the continued attacks on poor Dancer.  She is relentless.

I  got a new toy the other day.  I bought a Kindle Fire and it is really great, so far.  I just need a few more hours in my day though.  There is just not enough time to do everything I want to do.  And, on that note, I must turn in for the night.  I have been staying up too late and I'm running on empty.