(another note: The girls are still in Chinese school for 3 more weeks because their school started a month late due to construction.)
I came up with a daily list of things that need to be checked off, most of which they are doing with me.
Sophia (First grade):
- Bible: with daddy. sticking with our catechism and memory verses, and daily reading 'The Gospel Story Bible'. We are also working in some 'Hymns per month', the goodies and oldies like 'It is Well' and 'Come Thou Fount', David usually plays these on the piano so that adds to our family time tremendously.
- Math: we switched to Singapore math and I even bought all of the Miquon books. I heard such rave reviews I couldn't pass it up. We started on this maybe 6-8 weeks ago entering in Singapore math at level 1B which was mainly review for her. I have only worked in a little of the Miquon, but it is easy to pull of the shelf and find matching 'lab sheets'. Sophia has enjoyed the Singapore workbook, and we will start 2A this week! I also really like the layout and teaching method of SingMath, it is similar to Right Start Math in approach, but not quite as teacher intensive, yeah for me!
- Reading/Writing/Grammar/Spelling: Yes, an all-encompassing curriculum. I shelved the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (we were almost done), and started on The Phonics Road. Sophia is already a good reader so she can read all of the readers, but I still started her on the first level for all of the spelling and rules involved. We are really liking this! It takes about an hour of prep per week (watching a video), which is fine with me because it is extremely thorough and all the songs, readers, etc. are way better than others I had seen (OPG, Phonics Museum, etc.). A new friend at a home school conference introduced this to me and I am so thankful, it is exactly what I was looking for. This series will move into The Latin Road.
- History: Story of the World, vol 1. I considered doing this last year but decided to wait. This year I will have both girls listen to me read the section, then we will practice some narrating back to me, and for Sophia we will work in some dictation and copywork to go in a history notebook. Both girls will do a coloring map activity as well. On day two they will listen to the audio (which is really well done!) of the very same thing and do a corresponding coloring page. Even Bella will put her pages in a notebook, though she won't be doing the dictation and copywork.
- Literature/Reading: Since we are still early in The Phonics Road, there is not much reading involved yet. Therefore, I need to add in reading for Sophia for practice. A friend lent me all of her vol 1 and 2 of Veritas Press' 1st grade Literature Comprehension guides and we will try to work through these. My plan is to have Sophia read the book to Bella (they are great books/stories that both girls already know and love like Curious George), and Sophia will do some of the writing/comprehension activities while both girls will do some of the other fun pages, like coloring, etc. I just decided to do this somewhat last minute, but I think/hope they will enjoy it.
- CC Cycle 2 + Review: this will add in 1x/ week Science activities and Art, plus all the other memory work, some of which I will supplement with readers, etc.
- Chinese: This will be new, our helper will work with Sophia 4x/week on her Chinese characters, for just 15 minutes or so.
- Poetry: this is on their daily list and just means that we will review poems they have learned, and I will add in 1 a week or every 2 weeks, depending. This is purely for fun/creativity. They usually love these. I want them to memorize them but I am not a stickler about it, they usually get it anyway. I pulled about 8 poems from two different poetry books I had bought.
- Mom reads aloud: the favorite part of our day, we read classics, I try to do about 45 minutes at a time during mid-day rest. Then another 15-30 at the beginning or end of the day, which may be daddy reading. We just finished 'Twenty-One Balloons' which was quite fun for all of us since I had never read it! I hope to have some of these correspond a bit with whatever we may be studying in History or CC cycle 2 History.
- serve: make bed, toys away, after meal help, and more
- Bible: same
- Reading: 100 Easy Lessons, we took over a week off for our trip we are on lesson 48 and doing well! We do not do the writing with this.
- Calendar Time/notebook page. I printed a K4 notebook of activities and will guide her through it each day, this has a bit of tracing, ABC, shapes, etc. and then has dividers in the back for her History coloring page and Literature coloring pages.
- Math activity: I will not be stickler about this, but usually while I am teaching Sophia something I will let Bella choose some Manipulatives to play.
- CC cycle 2 and review
- Mom reads aloud
- extra: history 4 days, Sci/art 1 day
- poetry
- serve: make bed, toys away, after meal help, and more
With today's schedule (no Chinese school), the day went well (except Tobin cried a lot, and is basically uncooperative, even when we give him what he wants, not feeling good I think). Some extras that I do almost daily is curl up with Bella on the couch and read books of her choice, and we pull the Draw Write Now series down and pick something to draw, they love this, and I do too, it makes me feel like I can actually draw.
1 day down, a zillion more to go.
