A New School Year Approacheth

Just a note, this was written on Saturday, but I couldn't add the pics so I didn't publish it. We did start yesterday and updates will come.

I am probably getting the latest start of school of anyone out there, but there was a definite method to our madness! And it was totally blessed because our last two weeks of "summer vacation" have been a gorgeous Indian Summer! Jewel has had opportunities to really learn how to ride her new bike, we have taken lots of walks and just enjoyed being outside. This week the forecast is for rain...so what better time than to start school?

Actually, I am very ready to start. We have not received the ordered math curriculum or Flower's handwriting program (since I ordered the wrong one the first time around) but we can start without those subjects.


Box day arrived here two days before we left for Romania.

The girls had such a good time going through the box, seeing what we would be studying


and even getting a jumpstart on the reading.


Then, being the mean mom that I am, I put the books up on our shelves and had them help me organize the toy room. They thought I was horrible, but my main goal was to make room for more craft stuff, so they should be pleased in the coming weeks.

Then we headed off for two weeks in Romania (the posts are coming, I promise!) While in Romania, I was left three messages that the LEA reviewer would be coming to check out our school efforts...four days after we returned! ACK!! I spent two days franctically trying to make sure that everything they would need to see was organized enough to tell the story of our educative process. I needn't have worried, the reviewer was quite impressed with how well Jewel presented herself and the work she had been doing. Even math, which I was fretting about so much, was no problem. She felt that we were "way ahead" of what was expected in school. She should know, she was a retired maths teacher. Of course the thing one always worries about is that "s-word" (you know, socialization). That, too, was a piece of cake. The first thing she said was "I see you are involved in church, she will get plenty of socialization opportunities there so we can move on." YAY!! She went on to talk about what they did in their church (so not the norm in England) and then asked where we went. When Jewel told her, she said "my niece goes there!" In fact her niece has been a part of my Ladies Bible Study. God was definitely going ahead of us in this review. AND we do not have to worry about another review until next Autumn, so it is good.

As far as Monday, the plan is to start everything but math and Flower's handwriting. Our curriculum will be:
Jewel will be doing Sonlight Core 1 World History, Geography with Level 2 readers and language arts, MathUSee, Reason for Handwriting and Rosetta Stone German.
Flower will be doing Sonilight P4/5 (a mix of what they have updated and what Jewel did because they have eliminated a couple of our favorite things), Handwriting Without Tears pre-school, and Rosetta Stone German.
They will both continue with swim lessons and Jewel will continue with SPARKS at church. I am still working on finding a piano teacher for them both. A friend will teach Jewel if I don't find anyone, but she is moving in January and we are not sure that it is best to start and then change approaches that quickly.

I plan to do weekly re-caps on Mondays and hopefully will be able to participate in some homeschool memes on Fridays. We'll see how well I do.

Hmmmm...nine months without an update

Maybe that is a little excessive. Nine months! You know what they say about good intentions...

Well, here is the update! Today, we finished Kindergarten!!! It has been such a great year!

When we started, Jewel was reading letters and sounds, but not doing much in terms of words. Today she is reading fairly fluidly, even learning to read in her head. She loves to read! I find her reading to Flower all the time. Her favorite books to read are a book of fairy tales and a Disney princesses book. Neither are "beginner" books. Both were bought as read-alouds, but she has taken them over. Today, for her last beginning to read story for K, she read the story of Balto the dog to me. She did great! There were several words she had never seen before, and she sounded them out without any issue. I have not worked intentionally at all with Flower, but she has learned her alphabet and all the sounds just by being with Jewel. She has taken over Jewel's Barbie computer and does a great job recognizing the letters and the sounds. She is so ready to start school. As much as I'd planned to wait until after her fourth birthday, I've relented and will start her in October as well.

Back in September, Jewel had learned how to write all of her letters. This year, her handwriting has improved immensely and she loves to sit and spell out words on her magnetic drawing board. She has been teaching Flower how to write the letters and she can now write her own name without any help, and the rest of the family's names with spelling help. Jewel has written all of her own thank you notes this year. The proof is in the pudding, and a few weeks ago a substitute Sunday School teacher, who is skeptical about home ed, came to me afterwards to tell me that they had never seen such neat and precise handwriting in a child before. Yay! (He was even more shocked when Flower wrote her name on her paper--his son is one month older than Flower and doesn't even know his letters yet.) To me, it is just verification that it is working.

Reading together has been great fun this year. Sonlight has some amazing books to read. We've read:
*The Boxcar Children (books 1 and 2)
*James Herriot's Treasury for Children
*The Apple and the Arrow
*My Father's Dragon
*The Hundred Dresses
*Johnny Appleseed
*The Light at Tern Rock
*Five True Dog Stories
*The Family Under the Bridge (Jewel's favorite)
*Twenty and Ten
*Mary on Horseback
*Dolphin Adventure and Dolphin Treasure
*The Story About Ping
*The Story of Doctor Dolittle
*In Grandma's Attic
*The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Flower's favorite)
*The House at Pooh Corner
*A Grain of Rice
*Richard Scarry's Please and Thank you Book
*Capybobby

We have also really enjoyed the reading about missionaries as part of history. Granny Han's Breakfast amazed them both. It is so great to be able to use the stories we read to enhance their love of God. The Bible readings coupled with coloring sheets from Calvary Chapel have made this a rich year in terms of learning about God.

Science may be where we have had the most fun. Although we have not done all of the experiments, we have done several. They loved growing beans,


and watching caterpillars become chrysalids then become butterflies that we released.





Plus we have learned lots from watching the peachicks from last summer grow up and now one of the females has a set of chicks of her own. They bring us hours of entertainment and education in our own back garden. That coupled with the cygnets and ducklings have given them a good sense of the growth of birds.




If Science is where we have had the most fun, math has definitely been the least. Jewel is just not conceptualizing what she needs to be able to do. She is adding and subtracting double digits, but it is hard work and rote. She has no idea why it works or how to make it work outside one presentation. I have decided that the problem is really three-fold: she is only 5 and in the States none of this would be started until first grade!; Singapore Math is just not a good fit for her in how it is presented; and her math major parents have a very difficult time communicating math to her in simple terms. The first problem will correct with age, and I'm trying not to sweat it. As far as the latter two, I am changing her curriculum next year to something a little more visual and that has a dvd "teacher" to help explain the concepts in simpler terms. I hope that helps her learn to enjoy and not dread math!

PE has been all about learning to swim. Last week Jewel was the only one in her class to achieve Level 2 badge (breast stroke, back stroke, front crawl plus other water skills) and has achieved her 5m distance badge. She is just slightly off achieving her 10m distance badge. Flower has already achieved her Level 1 badge (front crawl, able to swim pool length on her back--no stroke requirement, able to get out of pool on her own, able to jump in and get on her back safely, able to collect something off the pool floor) and she also has her 5m distance badge. She is just starting to learn the breast stroke and should start back stroke next week. They both love their swimming teacher and he is really incredible in how far he has taken them in a short time. Jewel started just over a year ago with lessons and Flower started in January!




Finally we have incorporated school into as much travel as we could. We have been to an old textile mill where they demonstrated how the machines actually worked, we have gone to a horse rescue center and saw them caring for the horses and the veterinarian's work area, we explored a Sherlock Holmes museum and worked on deductive logic, we have visited several castles and gardens in stately homes, we have been to a planetarium (in addition to getting our own telescope out on a few occassions), we have had a demonstration of Krispy Kreme donuts being made, we have walked on a proper Roman walls in York and Chester as well as a real Roman Road in Rome (and so many more sites in Rome), we have visited the Egyptian room at the British Museum and saw mummies, we learned about Hadrian and his wall (and even *met* him to ask him questions about the Pantheon), we have learned about dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum and about Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre, we have gone to the ballet (Angelina dances Sleeping Beauty) and the theatre (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), we have learned about the early days of Rock'n'Roll at the Beatles museum and so much more. How could we not love home education? I won't show you pictures of all of that, but here is a couple of my favorites from the Media Museum where they were learning to interact with a blue screen. Jewel did some weather presenting (but she couldn't find where we lived on the map) and then they played with the tellytubbies. Too funny!



It has been a great year. We will be taking the rest of August off for Holiday Bible Club (VBS) and then a mission trip to Romania. When we return, I plan to use September as down time and preparation. We will start back the first of October! Wow!

The LEA is coming

I am not intending to ignore this site! School is continuing and we are making good progress. However, I returned home from holiday to a letter stating that the Local Education Authority would be coming to evaluate our education process. That meeting is Friday. So, I have been trying to organize things so that it is obvious what we are doing. It is rather nebulous what they expect. The law states that we must educate “full-time and adequate to age.” That is open to a wide-range of interpretation. When I asked the reviewer what she wanted to see she said, “we just need to talk and fill out some reports.” I don’t think it is quite that simple. So, I am making sure the things we have done are easy to read. And that there is some “proof” of social activities and field trips. And praying that I can answer questions that make us look full-time, even though seat work is only 2-3 hours a day (and I think that is too much for Kindergarten, but my over achiever constantly asks for more). I’ll give a more full report of what we are doing (with pictures of our science project) next week.

A Big Box and a New Term

A week before we finished up summer school, this arrived!

The big box from Sonlight! Flower was sure enjoying seeing what all we had. It was a major effort to hold Jewel off for a week, lol.

We officially started Kindergarten on 10 September. This year we are using Sonlight K (Core C) with 1st grade readers, Singapore Math, Handwriting Without Tears, Explode the Code, and continuing Rosetta Stone German. All is going very well. Jewel loves, loves, loves to read. Although I am a little concerned about using 1st grade readers, I know she would have been bored to tears with the Kindergarten readers. She is trying really hard, and on the things that are above her ability (e.g. writing similes) we are discussing and moving on. There will be plenty of time for that later. As we are getting accustomed to the new schedule, I haven't re-added German, but that will come later in the week.

My goals for Fall 2007 school term are:
*build confidence in reading and writing letters
*improve concentration and retention when I am reading aloud to her
*learn the weekly memory verses
*learn at least 5 facts about Turkey and be able to relate them to our holiday
*achieve next badge level in swimming
*provide a good starting foundation for history and science study

I am less concerned with how many book-facts she can spout off, and more concerned with how she is relating the things we are learning to real life. I'm really praying this year is a fun foundational year for her.

Here she is on day one, hard at work:

Summer School Recap

We had such a great time with school this summer. Our focus was Geography, German and Art. The geography text was over Jewel's head at times, but we supplemented with Australia to Zimbabwe, Children Around the World. I can't say enough good about this book! The pictures are gorgeous, and Jewel is fascinated with how the kids live. It has led to many a great discussion. We couple it with Google Earth--looking up and marking the countries we study and the ones we have visited. Good fun! German has been amazing. I'd say her vocabulary is about 40 words right now. We practice at the dinner table (colors, foods, what is on the tisch, what we see in the air in fligt, etc.). And we practice the numbers while playing dominoes or yahtzee. A fun way of practicing, and so rewarding to see her pull it all together. Art has been fun to see some of the masters and then have her draw her own version of the theme.

She has continued in swimming lessons as well. We've had a few fun field trips. In Portsmouth we went to the submarine museum and toured a sub, visited two castles and the cathedral, and watched the fishing boats. In Winchester we went to see the *round table* and the cathedral. In London we toured the Tower of London. All great educational spots.

I was pleased with the progress we made during the summer, especially since the schedule was totally relaxed. I hope she is able to continue this for the fall term! :-)

comments

I can't seem to get comments to show up on the new template consistently. I have them enabled and on my much older posts they are there, but not on yesterdays. It seems to be working on this post--so feel free to comment here on the recap post. *shrug*

A long overdue recap

I really thought that I could keep up with my regular blog and a homeschool blog, but I think I was wrong. 8 months without a post. Shame on me! I am determined to get more disciplined in how I maintain info about school.

For the recap:
We completed our first year of home ed at the end of June. We used Sonlight Pre-K curriculum with Singapore Early Bird Kindergarten Math, Handwriting without Tears, and Get Ready for the Code. Overall I was happy with our curriculum choice. I was not always happy with the stories for read-alouds from Sonlight (sometimes I did not think the subject matter was age appopriate) but the joy of HS is that you can ditch it if it isn't right for you. And we occassionally did that. The only thing Jewel absolutely did not enjoy was the Mother Goose book. We did use it, as I think it is important to hear rhyme and meter. But more often than not I would read it while she was doing her worksheets. So she *heard* it without really having to listen to it, kwim? We did some fun field trips during the year--went to a few museusm, went to Legoland, visited Beatrix Potter world and Beatrix Potter's home, explored castles, watched a glass sculptor at work, went to the Sonoran outdoor museum/zoo, saw dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum and walked along the Thames River. We built our own scale, did lots and lots of drawing and played with play dough. We've played dominoes, and Candyland (more for Flower's color learning) and Scrabble. Nature walks happened regularly. We watched the swan eggs and enjoyed watching the cygnets grow. We have watched goslings turn into full-size geese. We are currently watching the peachicks grow. But most of all we had a great time. She also participated in a weekly class at church with other 4-7 year olds which has dramatically increased her confidence. And she has had weekly play dates with a friend while her mommy/teacher has had adult conversation with other ladies. It has been a busy year!

My goals for the first year were simple and not so simple:
Simple: Have fun, see that learning is part of everyday, read lots of books. We accomplished all of that.
Not-so-simple: Have a beginning reader at the end of the school year, introduce math in simple ways, learn to tell time (Jewel's personal goal not mine), and feel confident that yes I can homeschool. She was so close to reading at the end of June, but did not feel she was able to read. She loves math and begs to do more and more. I really did not intend to finish Kindergarten math, but we have. She is constantly adding and subtracting and describing things in math terms. YAY! She is close to telling time, but not quite there. She is having difficulty counting by 5's which is kind of essential in time telling. But she consistently gets the hour correct and is beginning to get "half-past" consistently correct as well. For the most part I do feel confident that we can homeschool. I am more and more confident in putting the book aside and doing it a different way if the book is not helping. I am enjoying myself and I know she loves it so I guess it is working.

What since June? I wanted some time off. Jewel wanted to keep doing school. She won. Our summer program is Geography (a combination of A Child's Geography by Ann Voskamp, Usborne's Child Atlas, Australia to Zimbabwee Child's Alphabet, and lots of playing on Google Earth), German (Rosetta Stone) and Swimming lessons. We are having so much fun. The whole family is learning German together. We practice at meal times and on walks and where ever we are. It is actually beginning to make sense to me. And when Jewel was adding in German this week I realized that both language and math were melding. Real education! How cool! She has completed her first badge level (#2) in swimming and is in her second round of classes. She is doing really well. Her main drawback is not wanting to put her face in the water--but she will get past that. Although I thought three things were enough for a summer session--she was bored. Her church class and regular play dates also ended during the summer so we needed something else. I picked up Usborne's A Child's Art book and we have been looking at a painter or genre a day, using the internet to find other paintings by that artist and then drawing or coloring similar themes. Both Jewel and Flower love it--and I see a real interest in art emerging. Next week we hope to go to a Rembrandt exhibit near here to reinforce what we have talked about.

But the biggest news is.....Thursday quite out of the blue, all on her own, while playing Starfall on the computer she started sounding out the words and actually reading the stories herself. And Friday night she helped me read the Dr. Seuss book we were reading for bedtime. And last night....she read an entire beginner book by herself to me. Yes, Jewel is reading!!! I am as excited as she is. Her daddy is traveling this week, and she can't wait for him to be home tomorrow so she can read to him. After months of saying, "I'm not big enough" she now knows she can. YIPPEE!!

So there is our home school year in a nutshell. I am hoping to be more diligent to update this once a week. I think it will help me to see what we are doing. Thanks for reading the epic.

Plodding right along

Actually plodding sounds like it has been hard work, and it really hasn't. Jewel is really enjoying the Get Ready for the Code workbook. The first day she insisted that we do an entire lesson on one of the letters. She got tired and frustrated before we were done, and it became a chore. Since then I've limited her to 4 pages at a time. She is doing so much better. And enjoying it. Today she couldn't remember how to draw a "b" that we had worked on last week, but she remembered that she could look back at the lesson and did it all on her own! That is a big step, because usually if she can't remember she just gives up. We are revisiting the seasons and the months. She thought she had forgotten it, but she seems to be recalling more than I had hoped. Over the weekend she was busy teaching Flower to say "I'm two" and then helping her count to ten. Flower mainly just repeats what Jewel says, but it is definitely learning. Then out of the blue this weekend Jewel counted all the way to 40. She had not been able to get past 15. Yippee!

This was the Christmas of games. So we have been playing lots of games. Dora card matching, dominoes, Go Fish, Candyland and "My First Scrabble" which has been great to practice sounding out words. At least 2 nights a week have been family game night with Daddy. It is good for the girls and it reinforces what we are doing during the day. YAY!

This week I'm going to add in reading a higher level read aloud to them while they are playing. We'll see if they retain any of it.

That's it for an update. More to come....

A New Year!

Well I am back. I must say that keeping up with a homeschool blog has proven more than I could manage. But I hope to be better this year of at least posting once a week.

We started back today after almost 3 weeks off. I was a little apprehensive of getting back into the routine, but there were no problems. We did our Bible Study, introduced the new memory verse, read a couple of stories and then introduced Getting Ready for the Code. Jewel loved GRC! She jumped right in and did all of the first lesson on the letter "f" with very little prompting. She did decide that she wanted to colour the entire picture and not just the sections with the letter in it. I struggle with that sometimes. The perfectionist in me says "we have to do it as it is instructed" but the other side of me says that "she's 4, school should be fun, let her do it her way." In the end, I let her do it her way, but we did discuss that part of school is learning how to follow directions and she needed to listen to how she was supposed to do it (and ask if she wanted to do it differently instead of just jumping in). But she seems to be getting it. She remembered the verse and the reference we were learning before Christmas. That is amazing. She is good with the verses, but references are difficult. I don't push it. Again, she is only 4.

My one complaint today was with Sonlight. They skipped a good 20 pages in the children's Bible in the scheduled readings. That may work well with some kids. But my "we have to read each page kid" would have nothing of it. So instead of 2 pages of Bible we did 7 pages (and will continue to add pages until we catch up to the schedule). She was happier that we weren't skipping stories, but I know she didn't get as much out of it as well. I may have to just rework the Bible schedule. *sigh*

Progressing right along

In general school is going very well. Jewel hit some issues last week with not understanding "first, second, third, etc" and decided she could not do anything. So we took Friday off for her to have some down time. By Saturday she was begging to do school again. We talked about the concept of first/second/third while walking or playing, but did no school until Monday at which point she was more focused. At age 4, seven straight weeks of school with no breaks is plenty! Today she was so proud of herself because she wrote her name for the first time. In math we were discussing the concepts of squares and rectangles and triangles. Here she is creating the shapes with toothpicks and playdough. (And here is Flower with her play dough as well).

Reason #217 why I love Homeschooling

When everyone needs a "timeout" you can take one and not get behind.

Yesterday Jewel was struggling with her Singapore Math lesson, It was "count the ducks/cows/pigs and write the number in the box. She would count it without any problem, but when she would go to write the number she was consistently writing a different number--2 instead of 5, 4 instead of 8, no real rhyme or reason. I'd ask why did you write a 2 and she'd say because I want to. I'd ask what were you supposed to write and she'd say 5, but I don't want to. And on and on. And I got frustrated. And she got mad and started crying. So I said, "Neither of us are ready to do school right now. I'm frustrated and will say something mean and you are crying and can't work while your crying, so go play for 15 minutes then we'll try again."

She stormed to the play room and played on her Barbie computer (counting and sequencing games) and then brought her Magnetic Drawing Board to sit beside me and practice drawing her numbers. Forty-five minutes later she said, "I'm ready". And she was. And the lesson went smoothly.

Time outs are a good thing. #217 of good things. lol

Water Fun and Scale Building

Thursday's SEBMath assignment was to measure cups and bowls of water to get accustomed to the concepts of holding more or less. Jewel had a great time counting and pouring water into various sized bowls.


Then yesterday the assignment was to use a balance scale to learn the concepts of weighs more or less. We don't have a balance scale, so we built one.

Not very good at this

Well I am already proving that I'm not very good at blogging our homeschool journey. I'm sure it will get better. Still just working through the Sonlight schedule. We did add the HWT workbook last week and Jewel loves it. Her straight lines have already improved and she is making L's and F's every chance she gets. We hit a snag in SEBM in that it asked the student to write numbers in the exercise. Jewel hasn't quite learned how to write her numbers. So we took 2 days off the workbook and learned to write numbers. She can write 1-9 minus 5. We practiced that some more yesterday in addition to the workbook. She loves sitting beside me on the couch while I cross stitch (usually bothering me). So yesterday I handed her a magnetic doodle board and said, while I stitch you can show me your numbers and letters. She practiced for 40 minutes!

Flower is less of a distraction this week. Friday a week ago she decided to learn how to build block towers. She had been just lining the blocks up on the floor. But that day she built a tower 4 blocks high. On Sunday she built one 7 blocks high! So now she builds towers while we do school. Here's a picture of one of her first towers.



Over the weekend my dear husband gave me a day at a Women's Bible Conference with friends. It was the first time I had ever left the girls for an entire day with him and just went with friends. I had a great time. But Jewel insisted that it was a school day. So he was able to review everything we had worked on during the week. She told him which books and which stories and showed off for him. He was pleased with how she is doing. And she was thrilled that Daddy helped with school.

Off to get ready for another day....

Another day

Fridays are absolutely crazy so I won't be blogging then. We have a ladies Bible study at my house on Friday mornings and then lunch, naps and finally school. But we got it all done and then managed to convince Daddy we needed to go out for Chinese food for dinner.

Monday we got up at 715 (yuck) and the girls watched Dora, Backyardigans and Fifi and the Flowertots while I blogged, did email and loaded the dishwasher. Then it was school time. We introduced the new memory verse, read about Abraham sacrificing Isaac (thank goodness she didn't ask any questions on that one), and then began to introduce sets of numbers in Singapore Earlybird Math (SEBM). This was the first math pages that she had trouble with immediate grasp. She can tell me which set has more than the other in the picture, but when it comes to saying 4 is more than 3, she gets confused with more and less. She'll get it, but she sure was frustrated. I read Mother Goose nursery rhymes while she coloured and then we read the Bernstein Bears Almanac and talked about wind. Then lunch and nap (yay!) After nap I introduced the HWT workbook. The first few pages are just crayon holding and scribbling, so I let her do all of them. Then she worked on putting together some puzzle pieces that have CVC words on them (1/2 the puzzle has both the word and picture the other 1/2 just the word). She is getting pretty good at matching the letters to put them together. She was tired and didn't want to sound them out, so I didn't push.

Today it was more of the same routine, only they slept later so were only able to watch Fifi before we got started. More comparisons of sets today in SEBM. She is still struggling with the concept, but was less frustrated today. We have finished lesson 11 in book A. She did say she was glad to get to "numbers" in math. lol We reviewed what we talked about wind yesterday. She couldn't remember it today. Then we talked about rain. She seemed to get that more. Bible stories today were about Jacob and Esau and she liked that. She was able to say her memory verse with only one prompt. This is the quickest she has learned a verse. She also put together the CVC puzzles, but again didn't want to do the sounds. She's napping now, but we'll probably do HWT when she wakes up if she asks. She has also asked to watch Cinderella after nap, so I'll let her do that as well.

Fairly routine days, but I'm just pleased we are getting a routine. Thanks for reading.

The Start of the Adventure

On Monday, September 18 Jewel woke up, came running to me and asked "Is Dora on?" (her first question every morning) followed by "Are we doing school today." I answered "not yet and yes" and was greeted with jumping up and down with clapping. She was so excited to start school.

We are using SonLight Pre-K material along with Singapore Early Bird Math (SEBM) and (evenutally) Handwriting without Tears (HWT). So far, for the most part the fit seems good. She loves the SEBM workbook and is doing great at match vs. don't match, big vs. little, tall vs. short, etc. And her coloring skills are improving dramatically as she works in the workbook. She is doing really well learning the memory verses and then teaching them to Daddy at dinner time. She likes the readers, but her favorite books by far are "What People Do" and "Bernstein Bears" for science. We are currently working through the almanac book. Two weeks ago, Jewel had no idea about the seasons, only knew the names of 4 months, and had very little intro to "holidays" like Valentines Day. Today she can tell you the four seasons, that this season is fall but in England they call it Autumn, that January February and March are winter and April starts Spring. She is talking about making hearts for Valentines and that people play jokes on April Fools Day. I think she is comprehending what we are reading. It is great.

Flower is spending school time drawing or building with blocks or sitting in my lap listening to the stories. In addition to the 50-90 minutes of "school" time we are building with blocks, working puzzles, going for walks, going to the library, reading lots of books that aren't "school" books. Oh, and of course, she is still watching Dora, Backyardigans and Fifi.

Today we went for a walk through the neighbourhood and practiced "left vs right" and she picked out houses that "matched" or "didn't match" which is pretty simple since there are only 5 house styles in the neighbourhood.

So far, so good. Watch this space for our homeschool journey.