Update on J's home school

J has been enjoying Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo for her leisure reading currently. She finishes them fast so I know she enjoys them. We also had fun with a book of riddles. Daddy knew a lot of the answers and J enjoyed quizzing daddy. :) For her core language arts, she switches between doing copy work and writing journal.

We are reading 1 chapter a day from Psalms from the Bible. She reads aloud from her bible few times herself after I read it. Words she doesn't know the meaning of, she looks up in the dictionary with my help and I write down a brief definition for her and also a sentence to help her put the word in context. We review these words and I ask her how to spell them until she know them. I'm relaxed about it as we are sort of experimenting with this and she has been learning quite a few new words. We are still doing grammar and J really enjoys those as they are super short.

We still read fairytales and math stories from Enki and those has been great. She is reading 1st grade fairy tale now but I make a point to choose ones that are shorter. We do recall on those and also some type of artistic digestions on those (that might be cooking, painting, drawing, using beeswax, using wooden dolls, or creating scenes from using wool on our felt board). Sometimes J creates a play with Prime or incorporate it in her free play with Prime. She tells me the story (shortened version) and I write it down for her and then I read it back to her. She has been doing better with her "and" but sometimes her summary still does not connect. The interesting thing is she almost always feel her summary are fine and don't see the need to change anything at all even after I ask her about some of the major points she just skipped over in her summary. I know Enki says as long as the sequence is right, don't correct them at this level. And the point is to do them casually and not let it be so restrictive and perfect. So for now, I am just that, relaxed.

She has also been working on crossing out dates on her calendar and memorizing our phone numbers. I ask her to write dates whenver she writes.

For math, we have been using more manipulative. Pattern blocks, cuisinare rods and practicing both one digit and two digits additions and subtractions daily. J does the ones she have trouble with the help of cuisinare rods. She has been able to visualize better after she uses cuisinare rods. She is also doing 1 page (front and back) from THINKMATH/ day. (She use to do 2 pages) We have also looked at a few other math books for fun (like card games, dots, etc) and I try to show her math is truly everywhere.

For history, we are reading The Story of the World, and she just listens and then we have a comparison on how we do thing vs. how the people did things in the old days. We also read some of the books recommended from THE WELL-TRAINED MIND.

For science, we having been reading Enki Nature stories. I like how they are very descriptive and really give the children a sense of wonder and sense of magic. We have also borrow some books from our library, like shadows since both kids love playing with flash light. They have actually been experimenting with science through their creative play; making guesses and testing them out themselves like what objects floats and what objects sinks, etc.

Music is the one area I feel ever since J has been home, I have neglected to do much. Mostly because J does have choir class every week but we have not been singing nor learning as many Enki songs as we use to. Oh, I haven't got my act together to teach J any recorder yet.

Art is another area I feel the same as music. I might look into getting some good quality and fun art books for the kids and see where that takes them. Though the kids have been having fun making different things using pipe cleaners. J made a flower and candy cane, etc.

Gym.... this is another that's been neglected ever since J came home with us. We haven't had much time to do Enki movements/circle. But when we do them, the kids enjoys them tremendously. Luckily, the kids do swim every Friday and J takes dance class every week. And she just love to bounce on her ball and does it daily. I'm hoping we'll be able to be more active and go outside more once the weather gets warmer.

I find when I writes these update, they help me to know which area needs some change.

That's about it. Here are few nature pictures we took today:

We saw those animal footprints and J followed it for a ways, then she say, it goes to the "snake pit" and she stopped. What is she talking about?

Doesn't the 2nd picture looks like someone put icing on my brick paves? I thought that was neat.