Since week 1 of Homeschooling the girls (and boy) have been able to spend some time with their cousins and grandparents, and we have eased into our lessons. They have been swimming, spent some time on the farm playing with the mini-horses, completed a 2 week job of watering plants for a neighbor, etc… and completed their school work.
Week 2 of Homeschooling was Lance’s first week as solo teacher, and he did a fantastic job. Our goal was for him to get comfortable with our Math and Reading curriculum. The kids not only did their math and reading, they practiced piano, prepared a few meals (from scratch), yoga, estimated and measured how many bricks we would need for a brick walkway (and were only off by 1). The kids were well behaved all the way through bedtime, which to me means they were happy and content.
Week 3 of Homeschooling… this is our week 3, and Lance and I are co-teaching this week.
I must say I am 100% pleased with the All About Reading curriculum, and the girls are loving it as well. Not only do they get to manipulate letter tiles and review old and learn new reading concepts, they get to do really fun activities too. Roo is on chapter 3 of her reader and has fed a monster, played phonogram bingo, cut and paste activities, etc. Iz has had some really cute activities as well. She got to design her own floor plan (which lends itself to math), but went along with a story that she read about a family living on a houseboat for a summer… She got to “buy” different breeds of dogs as she learned her words… and she is moving right along!
As far as math goes, Roo has been working on graphs this week. She enjoyed making her own graphs with stickers and dot paint and answering questions about how many more or fewer… and she is about to move on to a new concept, and Iz is doing some algebra through 100. She particularly liked a dice rolling game where she rolled two dice and made a two digit number, and then had to come up with the other number that when added to the number she rolled would equal 100. She also completed a 5 square activity similar to sudoko but with larger numbers.
Typing (Orton Gillingham based), and handwriting have also been pretty regular around here.
And for recess… well, they enjoyed our “pond in the works” (aka: “mud puddle”).
We still have a couple of days of week 3 to go. Besides the basics, we plan on putting some more plants in the ground (with the kids), and getting some ladybugs and learning of their benefits in the garden… working some more on the “mud puddle”. We were supposed to be going to the aquarium, but the trip was cancelled. Instead we bought some algea fish for our ponds and will be learning about them and livebearer fish.
Beyond the Elm 
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