Tuesday, September 11, 2007

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............................