First 6 weeks

I’m learning that the school around here goes in quarters. Our foster daughter missed the first quarter of this year, but got a report card for the second quarter. When I was in school we had “6 weeks”. There were 3 six weeks in the fall and 3 in the spring (with respective reporting for each one). The only reason I was reminded of that is because Hannah is on week 6 of her 36 week schedule for P4/5. 🙂 So I guess its time for an update.

So far things have been going great. . .

Base P4/5:
– One bible verse a week and a nightly bible story reading time with daddy. We finally finished the P3/4 bible (we did Jesus Storybook bible twice before we even started this one) and have jumped into the P4/5 one.
– We have at least two Mother Goose rhymes each week. I usually find coloring pages to go with those as extra work if she needs something to do.
– She also gets at least one story from a book called “Uncle Wiggily” which is about a rabbit who can understand children and tries to help them with their problems. It is a chapter book without any pictures, so we weren’t sure how well she would do with it. She seems to like it and retain the information as I’ll ask her about the story later on and she can usually recall it. There is a board game based on this book that I might have to get her eventually. 🙂
– A new part of the curriculum for us is a set of workbooks called Developing the Early Learner (DEL). They are focused on four areas; auditory, visual, motor skills, and comprehension. She has gotten acceptable results in all skills so far. Every now and then we have difficulty distinguishing sounds (auditory) but not enough missed to be considered a bad result. We are almost done with the first of four books. They get progressively harder so we’ll see how it goes.
– There are also cultural stories from various other books in our reading list
– A song a week
– Reviewing the date (we look at the day of the week, month, and then date on our wall calendar and then mark it off)
– Social studies – currently consists of a story
– Science – currently consists of a story and sometimes an experiment

LAK:
– As an add on to P4/5, we’re also doing the kindergarden Language Arts. Since we started last year, we are on week 24 of 36. She already knows all of her letter sounds, but the focus of the curriculum is to do roughly one letter a week with activities surrounding that letter throughout. It also introduces her to some grammar rules and such – think punctuation, rhyming, capitalization. She ends up getting to work on her handwriting quite a bit over the week, so I’ve backed off on our Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) for now. There is an element of reading that is part of the curriculum that started in week 10, but she wasn’t quite ready for that at the time. Lately, she has been doing a much better job blending her letter sounds so that she ‘hears’ the word. I think she may be ready to add in the reading part (or we could go back and do that part later after we’ve finished the schedule).

Math:
– We got a book by Kumon that is labeled as early math for 4,5,6 yo. It’s counting and dot to dots at first and then moves into addition skills. I don’t push the math, but if she asks for it, we’ll do one or two worksheets. She is still in the counting part up to 30. This also helps us with calendar time.
– We also continue to do the 20 free questions on IXL.com if she asks to do math. She’s gotten a lot better with her coins and has mastered what they call the Pre-K skill set. I’m moving her up to the K skills and am interested to see how she does. Every now and then she pipes up when I’m working with our foster daughter on her math homework so I think she understands some of the basic concepts.

PE
– H and B are taking a movement class through Gilbert Parks and Rec. They seem to really like it so far. They get to do balance beam and tumbling and lots of jumping and running. This may be the last semester for awhile where they can be in the same class since H is turning 4.

Second Language
– I want to add in a second language element. I don’t want it to take a lot of time and might not push it very hard. I personally want to learn some more sign language and am considering ordering a set of DVDs geared toward teaching kids ASL. We have a couple girls at church that have hearing disabilities whose parents sign a lot. And Hannah seemed to pick it up very well as a baby before she started talking. I can do it with her and we can take it as slow or fast as we want. I just need to figure out where to put it in the schedule.

Wow, it sounds like a lot when I put it all down on paper, but we’re only spending about 30 to 60 min in the morning for the readings, 1 hr in the afternoon for any ‘teaching’, and then a 30 min homework time with all the kids before dinner. Give or take a little bit each day and its only 2 hrs/day. I don’t stress about it, if we miss something on a day, we just do it the next day or bleed over into the weekend if we need to.