School Update

A sweet friend reminded me on the phone the other night that I haven't talked much about how homeschooling was going, and looking back, I really haven't.  SO, to fill the bowl with grandparent gravy, I'll see what I can share about Poodle's year so far.

First - she has finished the primer book in Math-U-See! This dealt with counting, shape and number recognition, place value (units, tens, hundreds), introductory addition, skip counting by 2's, 5's, 10's, addition +1's, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4, 5+5, addition of hundreds and to make 10, tally marks, telling time, and a brief introduction to subtraction.  Everything in this book was presented in an "easy" fashion, and she was able to have a lot of fun with it.  She LOVED the telling time section.  And it's nice to see her be able to read a clock now.

We have read lots of good books using the five-in-a-row system, and we've had the chance to talk about countries like Russia, China, Japan, England, France, and Italy.  And, of course, the United States of America!  Nothing is terribly in depth at this age - it's more of a spray of information in lieu of a directed stream.  But she enjoys it and is getting a good geography introduction along with some new vocabulary words.

She practices handwriting - just using the "old-fashioned" tablets and lots of patience.  A couple of letters a day, along with some copy work.  Right now, her copy work is lines from the Thanksgiving play that she is doing with our homeschool group!  Usually, though, the copy work is Bible verses that she is currently memorizing.

We use readers like the BOB Books that help her with her individual reading.  We even have some Dick and Jane books for her to use as practice.  She continues to develop her reading skills.  I'm not sure when you can say a child is officially "reading", but she is certainly on her way.

And we play.  :-)  It IS Kindergarten, you know.  With one of our books, How To Make An Apple Pie And See The World, we ended our week with actually making an apple pie.  I had pictures of it!  But, they were lost on the other cpt, and then some of them were recovered, but all of those pictures are completely unorganized now.  So, they'll be hard to get to in general.

We've had lots of field trips and parties.  And we're currently knee deep in practices for the Thanksgiving play (that I previously mentioned).  Poodle is playing a pilgrim girl named Charity.  :-)  One of the things that I'm beginning to notice about homeschooling is we're not home a whole lot!

We don't do EVERYthing every single day.  Both school and life have to be flexible in order for them both to work.  Sometimes life has to give.  Sometimes school has to give.  But whoever gives tends to get it all back eventually.  So, it's cool.  So far, I'm really enjoying what we're doing.  I'm enjoying not only spending this time with her, but also watching her develop right in front of me.  It's humbling and extraordinary all at once.  I still will never say that we will homeschool forever and ever amen, because only God knows what the future holds.  But, for now, it's working for us.  She's growing in knowledge and love for God, she's growing in her basic skills, and she's continuing to develop friendships.  It's lovely.

She's still a "very active" 5 year old  ::ahem::, but we try every day to work on self-control.  And, we may even begin ballet lessons next school year.  :-)  We'll see.

So, that's a quick run down of what we've done so far, and it's a good indication of what we'll continue to do until the end of this school year.  And, now, you know!