New Year: New Curriculum

No, we have not dropped our core curriculum. We are still using Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory and Little Hands to Heaven. We are very happy with these choices. We just needed to stir things up a bit and make it fit our family's needs. I thought I would give a nice synopsis of how we are doing things now.

I will start out with science. Heart of Dakota LHGHG does include 2 days of science each week. The science lessons are connected to the history readings. We are still doing these days of science, but my oldest is a science nut and just can't get enough. After doing tons of research, I decided to use one of Elemental Science's preschool series. It is listed to be used for preschool and Kindergarten, so I thought it would be perfect.

 

 

We have completed two weeks of this science curriculum so far and the girls have loved it. It includes both a 2 day a week and 5 day a week schedule. We are doing the 5 day schedule and it is working beautifully without making our day too lengthy. I will do a dedicated post for this science curriculum by the end of this week. I would like to blog all the way through it.

 

Brina has now moved on to AAR Level 2. This reading program is phenomenal. I really can't say better things about it. She is on Lesson 24 of Level 2. I expect she will complete it before the end of the school year. If she does, we will finish out the year with reading through HOD's emerging reader book list. Then, we will start Level 3 in the fall.

 

 

On top of the changes I have already mentioned, we have also added in the beginning spelling lists for Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory. Brina is doing well with these words and also enjoys spelling. We have also moved on to Singapore 1A. I am still not sure if we will stick with Singapore at this point. I will reevaluate at the end of the school year.

 

Siri is also doing well with school. We have now started doing Little Hands to Heaven at double speed. We are completing two units each week. This will cause us to finish sometime in March. I am not sure if we will move on to our new curriculum at that point or wait until the fall. I suppose we will decide at that point.

 

I'm sorry it has been so long since I have updated on the school year. I will do my best to keep the blogging up!



Beginning Little Hearts

Hi all! It has been quite some time since I have taken a moment to blog. I hate that I let it fall by the wayside, but we were just way too busy this summer. We are in our second week of Little Hearts for His Glory and having fun with our kindergarten year. I just wanted to share some pictures. Some are from this summer and some from this week.

Coin rubbings during Little Hands to Heaven

Over the summer, Brina finished the second reader from All About Reading Level 1.

Someone is making a silly face while coloring. :)

Concentrating on coloring for her etching

 

Finally getting close to a finished product! She used mine as a guide.

Making a ten staircase with cusinaire rods. I highly suggest checking out education unboxed videos. These are great for developing number sense and working on place value.

We are using Singapore Essentials K for now. The A Book is very easy, so we are doing a couple pages from it every day.

Then, we move on to a couple pages in book B as well. I want her to feel confident and challenged at the same time She is doing well with both. We were using unifix cubes for addition problems, but she seems to understand them better with cuisinaire rods since working through some of the videos I mentioned before. She was able to quickly pick out which rod would answer the number sentence.

 

We have moved into our makeshift school room. It is nowhere near done right now. Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed to have pictures of it, but I thought it might be nice for other people to realize that not all homeschoolers have perfect homes. You all know what I mean! Also, we often do school in our pajamas. My kindergartener has sensory issues and feels that most going out clothes are too binding. As you can see, she also has favorites. I don't know how we ended up with the same gown in the pictures as they were taken probably around a month or so apart. Oh well, I aim to show real life and that is exactly what you are getting!

 

We have had a great first two weeks with Little Hearts! Here's to hoping for many more!

Update on my KINDERGARTNER!!!

That's right! I am officially calling Brina a kindergartner now! We started her K4 year last August using My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum. It was a very laid back curriculum that focused on Bible/character lessons, letter sounds, blending and science all centered around one theme each week. It has truly been a wonderful year. We kind of let it fall to the wayside some because many of the activities became too easy. We were ready to move on to a more rigorous phonics program. We will likely at least finish our butterfly unit just to do the butterfly habitat. :)

Since straying from the prescribed sequence in MFW K, we have done a few new things. We are currently using All About Reading Level 1 for phonics. Brina is thriving with this program! I can not say enough great things about it! She does get a little agitated at the fluency sheets, so we break them up over a course of a couple days. She loves the readers though. I am so glad we invested in this program .

We finished up Lesson 16 and 17 in AAR today. Lesson 16 teaches the sounds of consonant team "th." We learned the new sound, practiced it in words on our magnetic board and then played a super fun game.

She really enjoyed this game! She read the first side of this lesson's fluency sheet and will either do the rest later today or tomorrow. It's whatever she wants to do on this really. Sometimes she chooses to read it to Daddy at night. She requested to read out of the reader so that is why we ended up doing two lessons. We will just read it again tomorrow though. :p

For handwriting, we are now using Happy Handwriting. Brina is enjoying decorating the border and then coloring in her letters. Lol! Each letter has a little poem to help you remember how to write it.  Okay, so she's not the best at coloring, but it's not her favorite. We're working on it. She has come a long way. I am trying to stress now to stay on those lines. Our goal for the first semester of kindergarten is to get those letters on the correct lines. :)

This is pretty much how our days go. We are also doing Singapore Essentials Math K though as well. She is slowly working through that material. In July, we will start Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory. I hope we are all up for the challenge!