Homeschool Day 24 - Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008

Music & Movement: We sang and did pumpkin themed fingerplays. I forgot what site we used.

We watched and danced along to a video called Kids in Motion. She recognized a song from preschool and she really enjoyed it after that.

Reading/Phonics: I have decided to not use the curriculum's reading program right now. Shayla is too advanced for this. Instead I am using ABeka 1st Grade Phonics. We did lesson 1. It was reviewing vowel and consonant sounds. She has a good understanding of this. She completed several pages of circling and writing the correct beginning sound.

She read the Bob Books 1-3 of series 1 aloud. She seems to be sounding out the words, but I'm not all together sure that she hasn't just committed the words to memory. UGH!

I decided to try moving ahead with phonics to go with the Bob book - Mat and another phonetic book called Fat Cat. I introduced the -at sound. As you can see, I wrote -at and she put a letter magnet in front of it. She sounded each word out. I think it was a "click moment." You know, like she finally is getting this reading thing! Yeah! Small victory! I'm doing the happy dance!

She was excited that she just learned to read nine new words!

Phys Ed: We took time to smell the roses today. Not literally, but since our nice days are going to be fewer and farther in between, we spent alot of playtime outdoors today on the trampoline and swingset. We even ran all over the field, trying to wear the puppy out! But it was educational! We talked about hearing the birds gathering together to fly south, and we talked about the changes starting to take place.

Reading: We spent some time today reading aloud.

Science/Social Studies: The theme of her social studies is All About Me. We've already done many of these activities, so instead of taking the time and doing them again, I'm doing this activity that I did when I homeschooled my middle daughter. She absolutely had a blast doing it and learned alot, too. I don't know what the name of the book is because the cover has long since been lost. I think it was called My Body.

Anyway, first you have the child make an outline of themselves and decorate it. Then daily (or whenever you get to science/social studies) you learn about a different organ of the body. Today we learned about the kidneys. There is a little paragraph about each of the organs in the workbook, but there are no color pictures. We prefer to use library books or the internet. I can't remember which site we used.

After learning about the kidneys, Shayla taped the kidneys that I laminated onto her paper self.

She really enjoys activities like these. I'm starting to think she'll be a great doctor. You know loves science and yucky stuff, bad handwriting. LOL!

For afternoon activities, Shayla did her Bible lessons for letter E. She has been asking when we would do these again, but I'm still tweaking our schedule. Too much to do.

*Note to self: I think we will start spending the afternoons doing computer time, Bible time, Scouts at Home, music & movement, games, library and/or field trips. The morning is when she has enough focus to sit down and do papers.