Week Two Review: Still Tweaking

This week I continued to tweak my original plan a bit. I notice as the days go by I become more and more relaxed and remember that one of the reasons we want to homeschool is flexibility. I’m gradually doing away with a firm schedule of subjects to cover on particular days and flowing more with what the day allows depending on the circumstances. I am also realizing the importance of getting into Charlotte’s actual books more on my own to understand her philosophy better.

During week 2 we covered math (writing numbers 0-20), a reading lesson (word building with –ug, -it and review), handwriting, and catechism daily. Along with our catechism we are memorizing the Nicene Creed. Which we are all still working on...except Lily, who I’m quite sure could memorize the entire Constitution and Amendments if it was read to her a few times. We also sang our hymn before, during, or after breakfast. I found this version I like particularly well.

 

 

Piano is also an every day “must-do.” She is continuing to pick it up quickly and I can see her confidence building.

For our arts studies, we looked at a couple of pictures in Come Look with Me by Gladys Blizzard. I highly recommend this book and will probably buy it.  We listened to The Carnival of Animals on Friday before rest time and read pieces of My First Book of the Orchestra by Peter Smith. (Which I can't find a link to on Amazon and makes me even more thankful for our living books library!)

I ditched Little Pilgrims History because it seemed too text-booky...yes, I know that is not a word. We read two chapters out of Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans and enjoyed this book more than LPH.

Geography has been X-ed out temporarily. I was kind of just flopping around aimlessly and have decided to just do it briefly along beside history pointing out different places in our readings. I hope to combine Lily and JJ next year and do Paddle to the Sea and a more AO-like geography.

In Science we are on Day One of Creation and are studying light. We spent a day tracing our shadows on the driveway at different times to see how they changed as the sun moved across the sky. Lily then drew a picture for her Creation Notebook. We are continuing our study of the moon phases this month and have located the North Star. We also got to spend a couple of days playing in the creek and that’s just Nature Study disguised as fun!

 

Lily only did the Spanish app a couple of days this week. I hope to find some way to get foreign language in because I think this is the best time to learn a new language. However, it is not a priority or a necessity in our life.

We will finish up All of a Kind Family this upcoming week. With our literature readings and our other readings, I’m holding off on narration. Lily is only five and the CM approach would say wait until they are six. Even when she turns six I plan to only do one a day or even every other day and gradually work her into it. I can tell what we read is settling on her little brain by her comments on the book when we pick it up the next day or the questions she asks when we are reading a new chapter.

And that I believe was our week! (Other than art, which I will post about later.) JJ is doing great keeping himself occupied with his “school only” Playmobil(r) Roman Coliseum and Anna is just meandering aimlessly around prayerfully staying out of things. She has school activities to keep her busy, she just can’t manage to pay attention for five minutes or not dump them out everywhere. She is doing MUCH better than the first week though.