Autumn Unit Study

We FINALLY finished our Autumn/Leaves unit study today. I was supposed to finish last week, but I forgot about a few things I had intended for her to do until this week :) She made a lap book, which I will post pictures of later today. It contains definitions of words, poems she copied, poems she wrote, a mini-book on leaves and leaf structure and an essay on fall she wrote :) She also learned about six different types of trees we have on our property, wrote an essay on elephants (following a zoo trip) and learned how to alphabetize.

We will start a short unit study on Halloween things (bats, pumpkins, more poetry) Monday and it will include a lot of crafts and decorations :)

We also began a reading program this past week (Drawn Into the Heart of Reading). She's reading "Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims" right now. She had her first assignment other than reading yesterday... it was a vocabulary assignment teaching her how to use hints and clues in the reading to figure out the meaning of a word. It really helped her understand how that works because there wasn't really a word so far in the book that she didn't know. So she picked 'village' and was able to see how the context pointed her to knowing what it means. She also began learning how to use a dictionary to find the meaning of a word.

Grace is moving ahead with her reading and will be starting the Emerging Readers portion of Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory in January. She is still working through Little Hearts For His Glory at a good pace.

Julianna is having fun working in her workbooks for now, and we'll pick back up with Little Hands to Heaven in February.

Evie is absolutely driving me insane! :) She is so busy and into everything and FAST! She is the main reason I'm not doing preschool with Julianna until February and not doing school every day with Grace right now. I'm hoping she is more easily entertained and for longer amounts of time 4 months from now :)

I'll be back to post some pictures from our learning adventures a little later on...

Where Did September Go?

I cannot believe it, but it's already October! School is going so well that I don't want to jinx it.

Jayden is really enjoying the unit study. We added in another part of her school for the fall. Climate study. She will record the high and low temperature and precipitation type and amount every day this month. I also ordered the reading program that goes along with her curriculum that we will start in January. The program is called Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. Depending on how fast you go, you study nine genres of literature in either one or two years. We'll see how she does, but we probably will do the two year plan for 2nd and 3rd grade. I wanted to go ahead and get at least one genre done before we start the rest of the curriculum (Heart of Dakota's Bigger Hearts For His Glory) so that it will be old hat when we introduce the new harder work and more writing. We haven't gotten very far with the cooking, but it'll come. She's watching me more, and that counts for something, right?

Grace is still doing great with her school work. At this point I'm able to get about 2-3 days worth of school in with her each week... I'm happy with that for now, then we'll start going 4-5 days a week in January.

Julianna is doing much better. She's really growing up and maturing.... she's screaming less when things don't go her way and using her voice more.

Evie is almost 18 months now and her vocabulary is just exploding. She's also the most affectionate of all our children and will just randomly give hugs and kisses and smile at you. She's also on the last legs of potty training. We have a couple more weeks I would say before I'm comfortable with her going diaperless out and about.

So that's been our days lately. Lots and lots of outside time as well... daily walks even for all the girls. And very very good days even on the bad ones!