Finished with P4/5

Core: Hannah has completed her first pass through Sonlight’s P4/5 core (aimed at preschoolers age 4 and 5). Overall, this core was a great level for Hannah. At some points she was challenged and at some points she was a little ahead of the game, but she picked up a lot of general knowledge over a broad spectrum. I also really liked having the schedule laid out for me already. This was the first core I did with the Instructors Guide (IG) and it was great! I didn’t feel like I needed to check every box, but it gave me a good idea for pacing and keeping me on track. At the bottom of this post is a list of all the story books and some comments from me on each of them. It’s mostly for me when I come back to the core again and for anyone interested in using Sonlight.

Language Arts: Along with the core, we’ve been doing fill in activities from the LAK that we skipped the first time through. Hannah is also reading through a set of Sing, Spell, Read, and Write books from their Kinder and 1st grade sets. She is doing so well with them! I’m hoping to hold off on going back to LA1 until we start her Kindergarten year, but we might not last that long.

Math: We do at least one workbook page of math a day. We have a simple addition book from Kumon and some left over work from my foster daughter’s kindergarten worksheets.

Lapbook: For something to show off when people ask us what we do for school, I had Hannah make a simple lapbook that showcases all of the books and activities we’ve been doing. We had done something similar for P3/4 and when we pulled it out to look at it Hannah had a great time remembering the books we read last year. The rest of the lapbook pictures are here.

Extra stuff: The kids aren’t in any classes this semester but we get to go to our neighbor’s every couple weeks for a Music Makers / Art class with some other friends. This has been fun so far! I have an art book that my sister in law gave me. It was supposed to help me do more crafty things with the kids. So far, we’ve done one of the activities. I’ve got to try to do a better job because the kids like crafts (even if I don’t). Hannah’s art projects from this year are here.

What’s next? I drafted a schedule to go back through the books of this core focusing on reading them in geographic order (ex. all the Thailand books together). It should get us through until Hannah turns 5, then we’ll try to start the Kindergarten core. Benjamin will start P3/4 when he turns 3, so we’ll also be learning about doing two kid’s worth of stuff each day.

Pictures of all the books are here.

American Tall Tales – This was a CD that we listened to. It was a good exercise for Hannah to try to sit and listen without anything to look at. Not sure how much she retained, we’ll listen to these again.
A Treasury of Mother Goose Rhymes – I think it was great for Hannah to be exposed to these, but it was a long book stretched over the whole core and I got tired of them by the end.

The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book – This book has fun stories in it.

The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit – We actually have a complete treasury of Beatrix Potter, so we have some additional stories to read. Hannah really likes Peter Rabbit.

Milly-Molly-Mandy Story Book – MMM was good wholesome stories about a little girl and her family and friends. These stories were a little longer with less pictures, but Hannah enjoyed them.

Stories from Around the World – Folk stories from many different countries. Good to be exposed to.

Eric Carle’s Animals Animals – This book is a collection of poems and illustrations by Eric Carle about animals. Fun and bright to look at.

Children’s Book of Virtues– Good value based stories and poems.

A Child’s Book of Art – This book was supposed to be our art appreciation. This is an area that I’m sorely lacking in my upbringing so I appreciated having something included in the core. We spent our time looking at a set of paintings and deciding which one we liked the best and why.

The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit – I could have done without this one. The stories in this book mostly consist of the animals tricking each other. I understand the concept of using stories to talk about how other people behave and using it as character development, but we get enough examples of this just going to the store that I don’t need it to be part of my curriculum.

Uncle Wiggily’s Story Book– These stories were also longer and challenged Hannah to listen. She complained sometimes, but every now and then I’d catch her saying something like “remember when Uncle Wiggly did such and such”. There were 36 stories spread across the core so this one seemed to drag on a bit.

Family-Time Bible in Pictures – Simple bible stories with some discussion questions. It took us awhile to finish, but we liked it.

People– Data about people around the world. Good intro to the concept that there are people different from us and that’s ok.

Stories from Africa– Sonlight exclusive. We really liked this book. It was black and white, so could have let Hannah color in it if she wanted.

Things People Do – I continue to like each Usborne book I’m introduced to. This one is great for introducing occupations.

The Gods Must be Angry – Missionary story from Thailand.

New Toes for Tia – Another missionary story from Thailand.

Then and Now – Great comparison stories of the differences between a hundred years ago and now.

Developing the Early Learner (I – IV) – This was a set of workbooks designed to help you and your child work through a set of development skills (auditory, memory, visual, physical, etc) in order to pinpoint areas that need to be worked on and to determine readiness for reading and writing. We’ve really enjoyed these so far, we’re not quite through with book 4 yet.

Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?, What’s Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew?, How Do You Lift a Lion?, and How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World – This set of books introduce simple science topics in fun ways. How big the universe is to what’s inside an atom, to simple machines and the composition of the earth. I liked all of them.

Why Do Tigers Have Stripes? and What’s Under the Sea? – Two more Usborne science books. Great stuff!

The Berenstain Bears’ Big Book of Science and Nature– This book is actually three books. LOVE it. I always liked BB when I was little so maybe its just nostalgia, but it has fun stuff for the kids too.

The Year at Maple Hill Farm – Good intro to the seasons and the calendar and some more info about animals on a farm to follow up on the book we had in P3/4 which was about the animals on Maple Hill farm.

First Thousand Words – Benjamin got more enjoyment out of this book than Hannah did. I think it might have been better placed in the P3/4 core. All of the pages included a set of stickers (removable and reusable) and a set of pictures that were already on the page. Most of the pages were seek and find for where to put the stickers. Ben really liked that. The concept was just vocabulary development. It was fun to see what my kids already knew and things I hadn’t taught them yet, like about snow and skating.