A school post

We are in our third week of school now and things are going well. Just got to try to get us into a better schedule, but at least so far we aren't having a problem getting everything done each day. It's just not getting done quite as early as I would like!

I'll start with Julia. She is doing Sonlight Core P4/5, sort of. This means I am taking some of the books from P4/5, but not using the original SL schedule with them that I used with Sam. I'm using an alternate schedule that I found online, but have tweaked it quite a bit. Every week has a little theme and all the stories we read center around that theme. This week's theme is birds. It was neat how it worked out that yesterday we read about God sending the Israelites quail in the wilderness, and her handwriting page for the day just happened to be the letter "q" with a quail coloring page. :)

Handwriting is going a lot better for her this week! She did a review page today covering the first 6 letters she's learned, and I was amazed how well she did on them. I think she is starting to buckle down and really concentrate, and she is so pleased when she does a good job! We flew through the first 26 lessons in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, because she already knows her letters and sounds very well. Now she is starting to put short 2 and 3 syllable words together, and is doing great with that! For math she is in Singapore Earlybird A, and so far it's super easy. Just basic counting and learning to write numbers. She mostly really enjoys math!

Sam is doing Sonlight Core B (formerly SL Core 1--they switched the Core names this year, which has confused me a little bit :)). The theme for this core is "Intro to World History, Year 1. We got 2 big laminated wall maps which are going to be (and have already been) wonderful for helping the kids get a big picture of the world we live in. (The 2nd map is a US one, which is already on the wall, but this year we're focusing more on the world, due to our subject matter.) We have already been reading some great books, including Usborne's Peoples of the World, Missionary Stories with the Millers, From Akebu to Zapotec, and Charlotte's Web. This is actually our 2nd time through Charlotte's Web, and Sam is enjoying it just as much this time around. Such a wonderful book! I'm really excited about the lineup of read-alouds for this year, and I'll be sharing more about them as the year goes on.

For workbooks, Sam is doing Singapore Math again (this has worked well for us so far), First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind: Level 2, Writing With Ease (this is going SO much better for us this year than when we tried it last year--he was just not ready, but this year he is enjoying it for the most part!), A Reason for Handwriting B, and All About Spelling. So far he and I are both really enjoying this spelling curriculum, as it incorporates many different ways of learning and makes spelling fun!

I am going through the God's Design science curriculum from Answers in Genesis with both kids, and we are all enjoying it so far. We are working our way through the books about God's Design for Life, beginning with the book about plants. We have already done some fun, simple projects, such as making a cell model out of jello, and studying different types of grass.

We have also done a couple of projects out of Sam's science book from last year, because my little budding scientist can never have enough experiments to do! We made craft dough one day, and another day we made colored sugar water, which turned into crystals after letting it sit out for several days so the water could evaporate.

So that's a little peek into our school year so far. I hope to update at least once a month through the year so I can have a better record for myself, and also just in case anyone else is interested in hearing what we've been up to. :)