Christmas break

Whew, what a whirlwind year this has been for us all. We welcomed baby Jordan Nicole into our family on Sept. 3rd, started a new school year on the 11th for me and the kids all at the same time, and a million other little things. We are making great progress with homeschooling, far more than I ever expected to make. Melissa is getting ready to start K level math and handwriting when we restart on Monday (12/31) and is doing great with Hooked On Phonics. However, she is not enjoying our Sonlight core very much, so when we restart I'm going to try doing things a bit differently. I had originally chucked our instructor guide for the core because it jumped around ay too much, but now I'm thinking that I'll pick it up and start at the beginning of week 1, and just go straight through from there. We'll see what happens.

When we start, I also intend to supplement using Old Fashioned Education kindergarden program since its totally free. I am always open to trying additional stuff, especially free stuff. LOL I'll let you know ho I like it when we get going with it, I have a feeling that its just what we need to really get into homeschooling. Melissa just isn't the kind of kid who enjoys lots of being read to.

started yesterday officially

Well, yesterday we started our "official" school year, now that Jordan was born on Labor Day. It went very well in fact, much better than I expected it to. Melissa did some mental math aloud with me, both girls enjoyed their read-alouds, and the day's workbook pages were completed quite easily. We are really enjoying Sonlight core B right now, but I have a feeling its a bit over their heads so I'm working on attempting to get up the funds to buy the new core A that is coming out to do with them this year, and putting up core B until next year. Although, I intend to do core B a second time next year even if we go through it this year, so its no real big deal if I can't get core A, I may try to get just the instructor's guide for it and use our library and pick up single titles as we have the extra money, and just add it in to our current stuff this year for fun.

Today is going well also. Right now the girls are watching Letter Factory, that's a Leap Frog movie that teaches letter sounds. After its done, I'll do today's read-alouds with them, and then we'll take a break from seatwork until after supper. I don't want to give them too much at a time, they are only 3 and 4 after all. But they are really enjoying their "school time" and its meshing rather well with my college classes, so I have no issues with doing as much as they want each day.

I am going to let them watch the Letter Factory DVD every day I think, to teach them their letter sounds, for as long as they want to watch it daily. They are really enjoying this video, and its educational, so I see no issues with allowing it in our school lessons. Then once they get the letter sounds down, I'll get out the Hooked On Phonics stuff for Melissa, and let them both play at www.starfall.com for a little bit daily. And I'll introduce Melissa to Get Ready, Set, Go For the Code workbooks also, to reinforce the letter sounds while working on her handwriting a little bit. She'll really enjoy that I bet. Tomorrow I'm going to add in our Handwriting Without Tears pre-k workbooks for the girls to do, that should be fun for them too. They've thought everything we do so far is a ball, so I doubt they will object to another subject added in if it means a workbook. LOL These girls love their workbooks............................

starting the year

Well, we took a year to just relax and enjoy life, which we seriously needed. Now we are beginning. Its been a busy year for us too, we basically just unschooled and had fun with things. Now we are kicking off our first *formal* year, starting it now because I'm 22 weeks pregnant with a surprise blessing we'll call Jordan. No we don't have a gender yet, we find that out in about 6 weeks or so. But anyways, about my upcoming year for Melissa and Lydia.

This is what we bought to use:

Sonlight core B (formerly known as core prek)
Singapore Earlybird Math 1 (also got EB 2 so that there's no wait when we finish EB 1)
Handwriting Without Tears prek
Ready, Set, Go for the Code (shelved for now though, I'm getting Melissa's handwriting up a little more first)
Kumon tracing book for Lydia
Kumon cutting book for Lydia (shelved for now)

Its really going well so far, we are finishing up our second week of lessons but its still week 1 in the IG, I'm going half speed for the sake of stretching.