Week of 8/9/10- 8/13/10

We've finished another week!! My how fast it went! The past two weeks we've been schooling 5 days a week due to a very busy end of Aug/ beginning of September. So now we only have 5 more days to do until the end of August. We are all very excited about the upcoming weeks. On August 27th we will be traveling to Virginia and having the girls a birthday party there on Sat. 8/28. The following Saturday, September 4th, we will be having the girls birthday party here in NC. AND on Monday 9/6 we will be leaving for a Bahamas CRUISE!!!! We are SO excited. My husband and I have been on a cruise, but this will be the first for the girls. I think I'm more excited to see their reaction than anything else.

We had another great week of homeschooling. Here is a quick review of what we did:

Math- More addition, more number lines. The girls really have this down now. We ended the week with a few word problems and Mind Benders.

Reading/Phonics/Writing- We learned letters T and L and learned how to blend the letters with all the vowels we know. They did awesome!! I love seeing them learn new things!

Science- we began the A Beka science unit "God's World". We talked about God's Plan for us and the world. I'm really enjoying this book.

Social Studies- We continued our community helpers unit. This week it was a Baker and a Firefighter.

The girls are continuing guitar. Shaylie is showing much more interest than Nevaeh. Scott has also taught the girls how to play checkers and Nevaeh is loving it. She even beat her Daddy yesterday!! Shaylie on the other hand just doesn't really have the patience for checkers. It amazes me how completely different they are.

Each day we read a book they picked out from the library. My favorite thing this week was yesterday we read The Bearenstain Bears Count Their Blessings and after the story, I asked the girls to tell me some of their blessings. The answers just melted my heart. I honestly expected to hear them say things like toys and candy and they did say those things, but they also went much deeper without any prompting from me. Shaylie told me she was thankful for shooting stars, God, love, the Cross and our Pastor to name a few. Nevaeh said she was thankful for playing checkers with Daddy, her great great Grandma cook (who died almost 3 years ago- I didn't even know she remembered her) and cars to go places. Such sweet sweet little girls. They make me so proud!! I recorded everything they told me on our white board and of course took a picture...and here it is:

Awesome Valedictorian Speech!

This girl was the valedictorian of her senior class and spoke out about the public school system. I do believe she is a future homeschooling mommy! :)

Watch

And on to month two...

It's so hard to believe that we have finished 5 weeks of homeschooling and are now well into our second month! Time is flying, but it's going great! The novelty has yet to wear off and the girls as well as Mommy and Daddy are still having fun! Just a quick update on what we have covered during the past few weeks:

Math- We've mastered even/odd and ordinal numbers. We've begun addition and some very basic geometry (patterns). We also introduced number lines and how they can be used.

Reading/Phonics- We have learned all of our short vowel sounds. The girls have done awesome with this. Last week we had our first phonics evaluation (A Beka uses periodic evaluations- which I love!) and both of them passed with flying colors. Last week, we started consonants and began with the letter T.

Social Studies- We began our Community Helpers unit. We learned all about Pastors, Teachers, Policemen, Salespeople, Farmers, Vets, Doctors, Nurses, Dentists and Mailmen. We read books, watched videos and even took a field trip to the post office. The girls made cards and mailed them to their Great Grandma Betty in Virginia.

Science- We completed our Seasons unit. The girls really had a lot of fun with this unit. We watched a few videos and had a few craft days. We watched a video of The Very Hungry Catepillar and made a ziploc baggie butterfly. Fun fun! :) I learned that piecing together your own curriculum is VERY time consuming and can be stressful, so we decided to purchase the A Beka science curriculum also. It's entitled God's World and we begin it next week! The lessons seem to be very good and I'm sure the girls will enjoy it!

Lapbook- We finished Meet Kaya and learned all about the Nez Perce culture and life in 1674. The girls have really shown an interest in the American Girl series. We have moved on to Meet Felicity which takes place in Williamsburg, VA in 1774. We hope to plan a trip to Williamsburg sometime this fall. If the girls continue to show interest in the American Girls, I would LOVE to take them to the American Girl store/restaurant in New York City! :) That could be a field trip, right?!

Guitar- The girls are continuing to learn to play the guitar from their Daddy. The progress is slow, but they seem to be picking it up and are excited to start playing real songs!

Bible- The first few lessons in our Bible workbook are really about character development and teaching how God wants us act. It has some really cute stories that the girls enjoy.

In July, we had school the first 3 weeks and then took a week off and went to Virginia to visit my family. We just love the flexibility and the oppportunity to spend so much time with our children. That's about all I have time to add right now, but I promise, posts will be coming more frequently!! I really do want to document this journey as much as possible! :)