There IS No 15

Day four of our new school year is coming to a close, and what a busy week it's been! The hardest part, to be perfectly honest, has been motivational - and I don't mean the children. Lesson planning is so much more difficult when you have to dig for each subject, rather than just flip to the next page of the book. A Pinterest-based education is therefore not for everyone. If you're not willing to put in the man hours...don't even consider it. (And with that said, I'm struggling to find time for it myself right now, with all of our "extracurriculars." But I'm nowhere close to throwing in the towel just yet.)

So, things we've done this week...

- We're sticking with our daily devotions - Keys for Kids* for Rachael and God & Me for Milly. However, I really need to find something more "meaty" for Rachael. We could finish up the Bible Study for All Ages curriculum that we started last year, I'm really not feeling it right now. (It's a great curriculum, but it's a little draining trying to do two levels at once.) So I'm on the lookout for a really great, and preferably free, Bible program to follow with the girls...to add to our daily devotions and A-Z memory verses. (This week: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15 Both of the girls have got it down pat!)

- Rachael has done a little more in last year's English book, but we've added cursive handwriting (her printing still isn't great, but it's just time), played Grammar Bingo (awesome for jogging memory on parts of speech), and even spent a whopping $3.50 on a download called 150 10-Minute Writing Journal Prompts, which was money well spent since I certainly don't have 150 age-appropriate writing topic ideas at the moment.

- Milly and I have continued to practice reading this week. We have a set of letter tiles that we play with, rearranging them into different words, and she is doing SO well! She can read any three-letter word I throw her way, although sometimes she needs help remembering the sounds that e and i make. I've even thrown a few four-letter words her way (not those kinds of four-letter words) and she's sounded them out too. Phonics all the way for us, baby...none of this sight word business, not yet.

- Rachael will be catching up on last year's Math-U-See (multiplication) for the foreseeable future. We struggled with math like nothing else, because she just plain doesn't like it...and truth be told, I never cared much for it either. But it's a necessary evil and we're making it as painless as possible. She doesn't seem to mind multiplication as much as other things (and was amazed at the 9x finger trick), and is still enjoying geometry on Time4Learning*.

- We dug a K/1 math workbook out of the recesses of the homeschool cabinet that hadn't been touched, and Milly has been making quick work of it (20 pages in four days, with only a few pages to go!) She's a great little counter, except that she can NOT remember the number 15. She skips it every single time, and ignores me if I jump in with it while she's counting. I'm starting to wonder if maybe there is no 15, and I'M the delusional one... At any rate, we made this cute counting game out of a paper plate and clothespins (which we already had) to help her get a grasp on those tricky teen numbers. Instead of starting at 1, our plate has numbers 11 through 20. And I didn't cut off the edges to make it nice and flat, so once all the pins are on, it stands up "like a crab." Bonus! She's also played a few math games online from this site, but wasn't really a fan. We'll try them again another time, though...I'm hoping they'll be good solo work when I need to spend more time with Rachael.

- I really and truly stink at science. I'm more of a "sit down and talk at them" kind of homeschooler, and that doesn't really work for science. So Rachael still does science at Time4Learning*, and we've pulled a couple of easy experiments off Pinterest to get us started. First of all, we made rain...

...which, of course, meant a discussion about how hot air/cold air/moisture in the air work together to form rain. It didn't rain a LOT in our jar, but there was definitely water rolling down the sides - and it did rain quite a bit when we lifted the plate!

Today we did the old standard planting-a-lima-bean thing - but this time, we planted it in a CD case so we can see everything that happens. Not as easy as you would think, actually. But it's in there.

Who needs a shovel when you've got a spoon?

- Read rave reviews on Pinterest about Dance Mat Typing, so I started Rachael on it yesterday. The cartoon characters are cute, but she says their voices are super annoying. I say she might just have to deal with it. The first lesson taught her about the home row keys and had her practice typing with her fingers on them - just letters at first, then short words (a, as, add, all, ask, etc.) She wasn't as excited about typing as I thought she'd be, but brightened up a bit when I told her that she needed to learn to type if she was going to help me write this blog. And so, without further ado, some (completely UNedited) comments from Rachael - who actually made her font a much pinker pink than is available from Blogger.

Hi  it’s Rachael here, So far school has been (mostly) really fun .Especially today I’ve been  writing a  book ,(for my friend  Ayden ) .I got an A+ on a math test;-).I finished a 111 page book in 30-40 minutes , and had a fun science project (even if it didn’t work  L)

Ok I have to go write a (maybe) award winning book   Jsee you later                                                                   

Have a good time pinning -Rachael

* Previously mentioned Pinterest activity - see links page.