Last Week of July...

So today is the last day of July... I cannot believe it is August already! Of course, I'm wanting August to fly by so we can get to cooler temperatures, but at least yesterday was nice. I was able to wash a load of clothes, a load of towels, two comforters, and two sets of sheets... the only thing I didn't hang to dry was one of the sets of sheets... it was 9pm at that point. :)

On to school, learning, the kids, and growing up...

Evie is all over everything... she is everywhere and learning all the time! I cannot keep up with her. She has so many words and knows EXACTLY how to use them to get what she wants. She has a combination of signs and spoken words actually. Her receptive language is outstanding... there have been many times that I've called out to the big girls to do or get something and she has done it. Therefore she is still my favorite ;) She can now reach onto the counter, which I suppose will make me keep it tidy. She also can climb onto just about anything to get what she wants. Her favorite pass-time as of yesterday was to climb onto the counter and feed us all grapes and to pull the numbers off of the school calendar. I'm guessing August won't have a chance to be up this year :)

With the other girls... We finished up what we were going to get finished with the last set of books we read. They did NOT like the Brer Rabbit book and they would complain every time I said I was going to read the Pooh book... so I turned it in and told them we'd get it again later to finish it up. This week we have Romeo and Juliet and Charlotte's Web for our main readings and some great other books...

Madeline
The Little House (one of my favorites when I was little...)
The Runaway Bunny
Eric Carle's Animals Animals
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car

And Jayden checked out a level 2 reader and another Magic Treehouse book... she so desperately wants to read those, but just can't get into them enough to finish. I think they are just a tad above her fluency level right now. She CAN read them, and can understand them, but just not fast enough yet.

They loved "Mix a Pancake" and we are going to learn Psalm 117 for this week.

Praise the Lord, all nations!
Glorify Him, all peoples!
For great is His faithful love to us;
the Lord's faithfulness endures forever.
Hallelujah!

As far as curriculum... Matthew is using the Little Hands to Heaven (Grace and Julianna) Bible reading as our family worship readings. I told him that it would help me get their school in if he would use it AND it's passages specifically geared toward the ages of our children... a little short for Jayden's abilities, but it lets her get to the meat of the passage, and it's not too long to expect Evie to sit through. And Jayden is finishing up week 31 out of 34. My goal is still to finish before we go to the beach.

I've really been happy with the way our learning has been going the past few weeks since I've become more intentional. We've had some rough days, but we are moving forward.

Awesome week (or two)!

Well, my last post didn't quite all happen in one week... but I got most of it done! Plus we went to Grandma's house last week and we had vacation Bible school this week.

At Grandma's house we did some of our reading and a LOT of swimming. The girls improved, and I found a reason for water wings... Evie is fearless, and the wings let her do all the activities the big girls were doing without us saying 'No!' too many times. She LOVED the freedom, and is quite the swimmer! She was jumping off the diving board and going down the slide more than the big girls were! Not the best pictures of their abilities... but here's some decent shots. Julianna can swim, but wanted the wings because Evie had them... Jayden and Grace are really good swimmers and don't need to jump in the shallow end nor do they need Matthew to catch them...






























































Bible school was a great, but exhausting, time for everyone. They all learned a lot and had a really good time.... LOTS of crafts and games!

We did not finish the Pooh Bear or Brer Rabbit books, but everything else was read and learned.... we will finish those books this next week. I cannot get them to say the poem, but I'm 90% sure they know it because I've said it to them so many times :) So now we are off to a new poem... again by Christina Rossetti. This one is "Mix a Pancake"

Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan;
Fry the pancake;
Toss the pancake, --
Catch it if you can.

I've also been teaching Julianna "Bean Porridge Hot" and other little rhymes that the others know.

Someday it will not be so hot outside and we'll actually get outdoors a lot more....

More Intentional...

I've come to realize that since Evie has been mobile I've been less intentional about the children.... especially with their learning. I've been abiding by the curriculum as opposed to using the curriculum to supplement their learning. I've been just surviving... and now, I need to get back to being intentional with them. Evie is proficient with the stairs now, and the house is as baby-proofed as it's going to be.

So with that said, here's what we've been doing this past week.

*History theme - Pioneers Go West by Covered Wagon
*Bible is a review week this week...
*Poetry study - "Written in March" by William Wordsworth
*In math we are back to adding double digits, but amazingly Jayden's picked that up since last time we were there...
*Storytime is "All of a Kind Family" by Sydney Taylor, which they absolutely LOVE because the family is the mom, dad, and 5 sisters, and the character trait we are studying is integrity.
*Jayden just finished up reading Animal Adventures and is moving on to The Bears On Hemlock Mountain... it looks scary and she's excited about that!

Part of my new-found intentional-ness is reading more classic literature to them... I've fallen away from that except for what is involved in school. So I'm using the book lists from AmblesideOnline Year 0 and working up from there. On the queue for this next week is

*Winnie-The-Pooh/The House at Pooh corner (AA Milne original version)
*The Little Engine That Could (Watty Piper)
*Make Way For Ducklings (Robert McCloskey)
*The Story of Little Babaji (Helen Bannerman)
*Brer Rabbit books (Joel Chandler Harris)
*Poems and Prayers for the Very Young (Martha Alexander)
*A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson)
*Aesop's Fables
*Mother Goose
*other classic children's poetry

In that intentional-ness is Charlotte Mason's "A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six" that I now have hanging on the fridge to remind me :) I did this (without knowing) with Jayden, and I need to be sure to not leave the others out!

So this week we are working on learning "Clouds" by Christina G Rossetti

White sheep, white sheep
On a blue hill,
When the wind stops
You all stand still;
When the wind blows
You walk away slow,
White sheep, white sheep,
Where do you go?

Getting excited!

We are nearing the end of our curriculum for Jayden (Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory) and having a blast with it. She absolutely thinks George Washington was the best person ever and is really enjoying listening to our Paddington book. Math has moved on to fractions instead of the dreaded addition, so she's enjoying that again, and she's ALMOST through with her nature book and is excited about going on to the next reader. I'm getting excited about the next stuff we are planning! After we end the curriculum I'm going to be teaching her how to cook.... how to use the stove, read recipes, and put meals together. The end goal will be her being able to fix a meal from start to finish, and theoretically having her fix a meal once every couple of weeks or so. Then we will be moving on to our next curriculum (Bigger Hearts For His Glory) which from the looks of it is a very very exciting year! We'll start out slowly and build speed as we get into the winter.

Grace and Julianna are doing well in their curriculum (Little Hands to Heaven) and we are on schedule to finish sometime in November or December. Tomorrow they get to build the wall of Jericho and get to tear it down by eating it (it will be made out of graham crackers and peanut butter)

Evie has been working on climbing and walking/running... she is all over the place. Here that's not so bad, but other places that aren't familiar I feel the need to actually watch her.... she gives me a workout!

Lots of Learning!

Besides the fact that we've been "doing school" just about every day for the past couple of weeks, getting back in the groove after playing during early spring, we've been learning a LOT.

We've still been outside most of the day.

We've planted in our garden and planted seeds in pots. We have talked about how different/similar each of the plants are and seeds are.

We got to watch ants in action. We saw a few scouts come and investigate a spoon on the ground, find peanut butter on it, and go back and tell the others. Then we got to watch seemingly millions of ants come out from under our driveway....

We have learned about the doppler effect by listening to the ice cream truck. We have also learned the value of money by discussing the prices from the ice cream truck and comparing them to the prices in the store.

We have started t-ball/coach pitch with Jayden and Grace and have been working on hitting the ball and fielding with all three big girls.

Some of the day is inside though.

We have seen ginger root, garlic, and onions and talked about the differences and similarities.

We've cooked and cleaned.

We've discussed the nature of strep bacteria and how antibiotics can help keep others from getting strep throat :(

Both inside and outside we have been working on behavior... trading desirable behaviors for undesirable ones.

And Evie has been working on walking and climbing :)

I love homeschooling because you can do SO MUCH MORE than just school.

Great Work!

Matthew went out of town this past weekend, so I used this time to catch up on pictures and do a LOT of school to fill in the time. So I have pictures from the past two units of Little Hands to Heaven (our preschool curriculum) work Grace and Julianna have done, a bit of Jayden's work from today, and maybe a picture of Evie...

I'll go in order from oldest to youngest...

Jayden -

handwriting,
















copywork,
















and a project to see what foods are made of mostly water and mostly fats... she chose pancake, candy, orange, and cake and found out that pancake and cake are mostly fat, an orange is mostly water, and Smarties candies are neither.








Grace -

First her letters: D - dirt, E - elbow mac, F - playdoh? but it was fun!











Now two of her art projects:

First is Joseph in the desert and his brothers didn't recognize him (ie, he was hidden from them) - she drew a tiny Joseph, covered him with a post-it and painted with a glue/water mix and then sprinkled sugar over the glue for sand.




-
Next, we studied about Moses. This is where she cut grass out of green construction paper, glued it down, cut out an oval for the basket they put baby Moses in, and then glued it among the grass in the river.






Julianna -

her letters, again with the dirt, elbow mac, and playdoh...












Her hidden Joseph in the desert








-
her finished Moses in the river and she was singing our Fingerplay "baby in the basket float float float" at this point she was floating :)








And Evangeline on her first birthday, complete with a bruise!

The Birthday Month

We are now in the midst of birthday month in the East household. That combined with a beautiful spring have lead to little formal schooling, lots of work, and a huge amount of outdoor play!

I think we've managed to fit in one week's worth of curriculum in the past month, but we've worked on baking and icing cakes, designing cakes, making birthday presents, looked at the calendar every day, and have learned how to act in social situations :) We've also had dentist and doctor appointments where we have seen x-rays and have talked about lots of science!

And like I said, plenty of outside time! The girls have been outside at least 6 hours every day, and sometimes more than that. They have been reading nature books and finding things in our yard, pioneer books and pretending to be pioneer children and thinking of what games they may have played, and have caught butterflies. We also got to witness flying ants come out of the colony and take flight yesterday!

We are also trying to plan a field trip/vacation, and we are thinking maybe Washington, DC. I'm also thinking that might be too much and we might do better to do something in the mountains. We'll see where that takes us.