Our first week was so much fun. I really had fun working with the girls. They enjoyed the time we spent so much that they ask to do “learning games” and homeschool all day long. I actually feel bad when I need to pull everyone back into the living room (also our play room) so that I can nurse the baby. Most of the activities that I have for them right now need to be supervised, and I don’t have anything organized well enough to make sure that all the choking hazards are out of reach of Amelie.
Speaking of Amelie, it was really quite a surprise for me to find that she can do nearly all of the activities that Moyra can. Amelie is 2 and Moyra is 3.5. Amelie learned the letter A and what sound it makes, and she was able to do a lot of the activities that I printed from the Confessions of a Homeschool Blogger site. Her site is amazing, by the way. I paid for her A-Z curriculum download and it was well worth it. Much of the material is available for free download if you look through her alphabet posts, but having it all together and available for me to reprint any time I like is really a valuable time saver. The girls loved all of the ant activities for the letter A, and the letter B printables are just gorgeous! I can’t wait to see what we’ll be doing for C!!!
This week for before Five in a Row we read Ask Mr. Bear. I have to admit that I was a little intimidated after reading this book to the girls. Firstly, they didn’t seem much interested in this particular book. Even Moyra didn’t sit through it, which is really abnormal. After reading it for three days and struggling to get the girls to pay attention and stay with me the whole time I was really starting to think that we weren’t ready for BFIAR. I started to feel like I had damaged their attention span by letting them watch so much TV (movies – we don’t have traditional television/cable) while I was pregnant and bedridden. I tried different ways to discuss the book when we were done and the children were both pretty non-communicative about it. The only activity they really enjoyed was when I had them run, trot, gallop and skip across the living room floor over and over just like the animals did in the book. I also printed some things from the Homeschool Share site to go along with the book, and when I got out those interactive materials and used them while reading the book, that helped to hold their attention. I wish I’d started that first thing in the week! I’m hoping that the other titles aren’t as difficult to get through for us as this one has been. I’m not giving up! I plan to go through these books again next year with Amelie, and I’m sure that by then both girls will be ready to sit through them even if they aren’t now.
This week’s Brightly Beaming theme was cows. We live in the country and have cows everywhere around us, so the girls are very familiar with them. Our vocabulary word was calf, and Moyra had no trouble at all learning the word. I really enjoyed having a vocabulary word for them to learn. I’m surprised by my daughter’s ability to pick things up so easily sometimes, and have realized that I need to give them a little more credit. Because I’ve been out of commission for so long, I think it has become easy for me to underestimate their abilities. I feel like I need to get to know them again.
I realized while writing this post that I didn’t take nearly enough pictures this week! Here are some of the things we did:
Outdoor Play - Bubbles and Sidewalk Chalk
Homeschool Group Day in the park
Amelie's Cow Puppet Craft
Moyra's Cow Puppet Craft
You can find instructions for the cow puppet craft here.
We also did a dandelion themed unit for our homeschool group, and enjoyed learning all about this very useful plant. I’m sure I’ll revisit this theme, because we didn’t have time to do all the wonderful activities that I think I would have liked to do. I crammed way too much in this first week! I’ll definitely take more pictures next week, and hope to write more frequently now that the baby is sleeping through the night!
