First Week of School

Here are a few highlights from our first week of school:

We memorized Proverbs 4:20 "Pay attention, my child, to what I say. Listen carefully." Our character trait was "Attentiveness:  I listen with my eyes, ears, and heart."

We read lots of stories together and learned (reviewed) the letter Ff. We memorized (reviewed) the days of the week and began to learn the months of the year and the "Thirty days hath September..." poem.

"I Spy"...things that begin with the letter Ff. Benjamin found a flower, food, flipping frog, fork, Frank (the toy combine...named after the character in the movie "Cars"), and a fence.

"Jack & Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water." Here they are, coming back down with their pail full of water.

We used the water to "paint" on the porch...and house...and windows. They loved it! They begged to continue for an hour.

Benjamin was fascinated with making broad strokes with his fat paintbrush.

In preparation for handwriting we learned how to shake hands with our right hand through use of lots of different sensory experiences. Benjamin also started learning the names of the manipulatives he will use to learn how to construct his capital letters (read more about our handwriting curriculum here), learned some fun games to promote good posture and discovered a really cool trick to help him with his pencil grip. (Try it! Lay the pencil on a table, pointing away from your body. Using your right hand, pinch the pencil where the paint meets the wood. With your left hand, grasp the eraser and "flip" the pencil around. Voila! Correct pencil grip!) He really loves handwriting! 

Seth is making the "wood pieces" we need for handwriting. I didn't purchase the set from the company (it costs $35!) & planned to make the pieces from cardboard, but Seth decided to make them from wood. What a great daddy!

We've been using our wood pieces in lots of fun games this week in order to get the vocabulary (big line, little line, big curve, little curve) firmly planted in Benjamin's head to make learning to construct letters easier. At the same time we are also working on other vocabulary we will need: top, middle, bottom, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, over, under, behind, between, etc.

Benjamin did his first "copywork" this week, learning to write his name within the guidelines on his manuscript paper (more or less). He really made a lot of improvement throughout the week. He started with letters that were all different sizes with little sense of orientation. By Thursday he was forming letters much more consistently.

One of the things I really love about the Language Arts component of our curriculum is their philosophy on creative writing. I borrowed the instructor's guide from a friend of mine and this portion of the introduction sold me! "Another dream we hold dear to our hearts is to help you train your children to be exceptional communicators. Sonlight's goal is that your children would be both fond of and talented in written and spoken expression. We believe that if children are provided with time to practice [creative] writing every day, it will cease to be a chore and soon become second nature. Therefore, we have designed our programs to give your children something to 'write' every day." Daily "writing" in this program doesn't always have to involve "putting pencil to paper." We will practice writing this year by means of copywork, brainstorming/idea generation, creative expression assignments (which will produce some type of written work), and editing/revision. I am so proud of Benjamin for the excellent "writing" he produced this week. In particular, a "finish the story" assignment in which I read him a beginning scenario and he made up the end. We are laying the groundwork for successful writing! So exciting!

One of the highlights of our week, especially for Talia, was learning to cut. They expected to cut something everyday. (We worked it in 3 days out of 5.) On Thursday we made a paper chain (snake), which Seth used that night in our reenactment of the story of "the fall" in Genesis. The kids were shocked when, at the end, he stomped on the snake's head!

I couldn't get a picture, but Talia cuts with her tongue sticking out in concentration. So cute!

Benj loved taping his strips together to make a chain. He really got the hang of it!

Finally, Benjamin is loving his science time! I mentioned in my previous post that he loves the Berenstain Bears book we are using. First we are learning about the seasons. The week we learned about winter.

On Thursday we pretended it was winter and dressed up in all our winter clothes. Benjamin got really into this role-play, throwing dozens of imaginary snowballs at Talia and me. We had to abandon this game pretty quickly since we were all sweating profusely in our jackets, hats, and wool socks. 

There were definitely some challenges this week. I mentioned, for example, that Talia and I had conflicting assumptions about the level of her participation. One of the specific challenges has been that she, as the verbal one, is prone to jump right in with every answer. And Benjamin is very happy to let her do it. I tweaked the schedule this week in various ways (no two days were even remotely the same), trying to come to some kind of happy medium. I think we are getting there. :) Another challenge has been juggling all my regular responsibilities. Although school activities really only take up about 2 hours, start to finish, it seems like the whole day revolves around school! I'm going to have to be very disciplined about using my spare moments to their fullest. I'm sure as some of the "newness" wears off we will settle into a better routine. (I hope!)

We really did have a fun and rewarding week, though. I'm excited to continue our learning adventure!