Weekly Report 1/26-1/29

Week 18

This week I've been learning to juggle the two girls during school time. Rebekah is past ready to start her preschool work, and she's really been wanting the same one on one time that Miriam gets during school. I think we've found a really good rhythm this week. We start with everyone together for calendar, memory work and Bible. Then the girls take turns doing The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading- they either sit and listen to the other sister's turn or play with Michael for a few minutes since this takes less than 10 minutes each. Then we often do a read aloud all together. I get Miriam started on her handwriting and tell her which pages to do in Explode the Code since she can do those things independently. While Miriam does her work Rebekah and I have about 20 minutes to sit together and do a few pages in her ETC book and a few pages in her Singapore Earlybird book. Then I get Rebekah started on her pre-handwriting book while I move over to help Miriam with a few pages in her Singapore 1A book. When Rebekah finishes her handwriting book she is done with seatwork and can go play with Michael, but she often chooses to work in one of her "fun" preschool books especially the cutting and pasting books. After Miriam and I finish Singapore we move to the floor for RightStart Math. After Miriam's Rightstart lesson Rebekah usually wants a turn with the fun manipulatives so she and I usually have a 15 minute math lesson together using some of our fun math manipulatives.

It's quite busy, but thus far is working very well!

Reading

Miriam finished up the long A section in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and has moved into the long E section. She did lesson 8 in Explode the Code 3. She is continuing to amaze us at the books she can grab off our shelves and read independently. I ordered her some Amelia Bedilia books this week that should arrive soon since she loves to read funny stories. We finished up Stuart Little this weekend. We read out of our Beatrix Potter collection this week since I still haven't decided what chapter book to move to next- though I'm leaning toward Mrs. Piggle Wiggle due to Miriam's love of all things funny.

Math

We moved all the way through lesson 42 in Rightstart Math this week (which included several Rightstart sessions last weekend that she begged to do)- this section had a lot of games to play which Miriam adored! She loves playing memory with sums of 10 and also loved the new "go to the dump game." She's also completed the first two exercises in the Singapore 1a subtraction section. I've taken her down to just one or two pages of Singapore a day- she still loves to do math in writing- but she's now past the skills we are working on in Rightstart so I'm trying to slow her down. I'm thinking of switching to Math Mammoth next year in order to still fulfill her need to do worksheets, but at the same time not getting ahead of where we are in RightStart.

Bible

This week we talked about Jesus' birth, childhood and baptism. The girls memorized Psalm 71:9.

Preschool

Rebekah loves preschool time. This week while working on The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading Rebekah could correctly identify and name the sounds of the following letters: A, E, I, O, U, B, C, D, and F. She still sometimes misses I and D, but the others are very solid. I realized that waiting on starting Explode the Code until after the baby arrives is probably not a good idea, as it will seem like busy work by then. So we started letter F in the first Explode the Code book about mid-week. She does not have the fine motor skills to correctly write the letter independently, so I'm having her trace the letter after I write it in a highlighter. We also started doing work in Singapore's Earlybird Series- this week she's been working on "same" and "different." I did not think she was going to be a workbook learner like Miriam is, but I find that everyday shes begging to do "just one more page" or "just a few more, Mommy?" when I say we are done. She also loves her sister's RightStart math, but since she's not quite ready to start level A we're having a lot of fun playing with the manipulatives. This week we used the cards to find matching numbers while playing memory and Go Fish. She also wants to do money like her sister, so we are using pennies as counters.