School Days

Every home school is different, and that is one of the fun things about it. At our house, no 2 days look alike either. This school year has been lots of fun so far. Sam has changed so much over the summer! Here are some of our favorites this year.

Sam is learning phonics, and doing well. We are still catching up to where he was last spring, wish we had stayed with it a little over the summer. He is still perfecting the short vowels before we move on to long vowels. Last week I cut out a dozen magazine pictures and wrote short sentences he could read to go with each one. He had to match them up. Today we played a simple version of scrabble, and Sam did well. While we played that Cora laid out the letters of her name.

Cora is learning to spell and write her name and she’s also learning shapes. Today we played the flyswatter game, where she had to smack the shape Sam called out. Good practice for Sam too:) When Cora writes her name, she writes it in reverse. Maybe because she’s left handed? I know she will correct it in time, right now its pretty cute!

We’ve been reading the story of Jonah this week, and today we acted it out, which the kids loved. We also made accordion books to illustrate the story.

For writing practice, we send lots of thank you notes or cards. This is more motivating to Sam than just writing letters for the sake of writing.

We’ve been learning a hymn each week, yes our church sings the good old hymns. Each one contains such biblical truths that we talk about, and I hope by at least knowing the chorus the kids will feel more a part of the singing at church (and stay out of trouble). This week is “I’ve Got a Mansion Just Over the Hilltop”. We hum it or sing it as we wash hands, set the table, buckle seat belts, etc. Yesterday Sam drew a mansion on bright yellow paper and Cora added streets of gold, then we hung it up in their room.

We borrowed a book with step by step instructions on drawing animals, and Sam really got into that. So far, he has shown my artistic ability (none!), and usually he’d try to draw something then give up when his didn’t resemble anything. With this book, he was so proud of his work…maybe there’s hope!

Our science book has us learning about the 5 senses. First was touch. We did a few fun things the kids have asked to do again. We taped our thumb to our pointer finger then tried to do things like pick up money off the floor, open a door, zip/button pants, eat with a fork. Cora got so tickled at not being able to do anything without her thumb. After that we each filled a paper sack with 5 items from around the house and yard. Then we took turns feeling in each others bags and guessing what we felt. Sam was impressed how his fingers could identify things. Of course, Eli's bag included a tractor, baler, combine, hay bale, and 4-wheeler.

Our days are full, and we don’t usually get everything done. But there’s always tomorrow. We are blessed to be doing this for now.