School Progress

We completed the 7th "Teach Your Child to Read" lesson today. So far I'm very pleased. Addy and Rafe get in on the sound practice as we orally review in the evening. The lessons themselves are pretty short, so as I think of it, I just have them all repeat after me. So far we have the "m" "s" "e" and "a" sounds, and today we learned "t." I made Gabi lay down and nap today because the last few evenings she's been fussy, and as soon as she woke up she told Mitch, "We learned a new sound today in school - 't' - and it always has to be short." With all the other sounds we hold them like "mmmm" and then say it fast "m," but you can't hold "t," so she was excited to tell him. Then of course Addy and Rafe made their "t" sounds. So fun to watch them all learning at their own level!

We got the Saxon manipulatives kit for grades k-3 a couple days ago. It's got pattern blocks, a scale, bears, clocks, ruler, dominoes, and other things that are needed for the lessons for grades k-3. Gabi was soooo excited to get it. Thank goodness we only had to wait 2 days thanks to Amazon Prime! lol. They all want to do math ALL the time. In the kdg book it only lists 12 lessons per month, and they've already done two. I wasn't planning on starting anything but the "Teach Your Child to Read" book until August, but they're just biting at the bit. This morning they played with the pattern blocks for 10 minutes while I watered the chickens and garden, then told me about what they'd made. Gabi made a person and a Christmas tree with ornaments. Addy made a tower. Rafe was just saying the colors. I had helped him start an abstract pattern, and he just placed pieces around that.

We're really liking it so far. It's taking me back to my kindergarten days. We had the exact same math kit. I remember we had ALL the manipulatives that came in the kit. It also does daily weather/calendar updates like we did in school. I looked for a calendar that had weather that I liked, but I guess I'm just going to have to do my own thing. I want one where the kids can decorate it month to month, and there just wasn't really anything like that.

Happy Birthday to Uncle Michael! Almost an adult ;)