I was flipping through old posts and realized that it’s been a while since I gave a schooling update so here goes:
F
He is halfway through the second unit of Rod and Staff’s First Grade Bible Nurture and Reader Series. He is reading some library books with a little assistance (Little Bear, Frog and Toad, Mr. Putter and Tabby) and he is reading when we go places (store signs etc.). In another month I’ll probably be ready to call him a reader.
He is also steadily progressing through first grade math. He can add numbers up to the seven family and has begun applying what he has learned to his life. Yesterday when I sent him outside to pick up four toys, he spent several minutes telling me all the combinations of toys he could use to make four ( three trucks and one trowel and so on).
We are about two weeks behind where I had planned for us to be in school and we don’t get art or science done most weeks, so I’m trying to figure out how to get those back into our schedule in an accomplishable way.
He still loves school and is eager to work especially when the others are napping or otherwise occupied.
Su
Has finished several of the Rod and Staff Preschool books. We are now on Book E (Everywhere We Go) and I am supplementing that with another workbook I bought at Walmart and some things my neighbor gave me that her child had outgrown. Su’s fine motor skills are improving and she is learning to color and cut nicely. The biggest thing for her is boredom not with the work itself but with sitting still. We have the same problem at meals. She will sit for a while then declare that she is full because she is tired of sitting in a chair.
We are working on personal neatness, cleaning up after themselves and so on with both of them. F is actually fairly good at it, but Su scatters things behind her wherever she goes.
W
Isn’t doing “school” yet of course but does get time each day to do puzzles or the shape ball with me. I also try to read him at least one paper (instead of board book) each day. He will frequently bring a book to someone and demand “read”. Thankfully the other two can “read” his board books and he considers this reading and will sit on the couch with them while they explain the pictures to him.
I have recently started doing sitting still practice with him. Since we’ve been going to a church with a nursery I haven’t had a lot of motivation to do this so he is much older than the others were when I started. He is just so good natured that it is hard for me to do things that will cross him. I find it hard to find ways to cross him and I find it hard to do because most of the time I can work around the few things that annoy him.? Obviously that’s not a good long-term method for any of us, so I’m trying to change that.
I am really enjoying the time I spend teaching the children formally and informally. I do still think that F needs the socialization of school and we are planning to send him to a half day kindergarten next year, but I am also intending to continue to teach him myself as well.