Reading and Writing

Just checking in...

Caley has been doing so well with reading lately. She most recently learned the letter "f" and is sight-reading several words such as "is," "a" (pronounced "uh"), and "on." It's so encouraging! I will try to post a video soon.

We also have been doing the Handwriting Without Tears  curriculum to work on writing letters. This curriculum is so fun because it starts with using wood pieces to make the letters so it's a very visual and kinesthetic, which are a 4 year old's prime ways of learning.

Other than that, we've been doing a lot of playdates with new friends and games such as Scrabble and Guess Who. Caley also visited the Crista Senior home and played Bingo with the children's ministry kids. She met several people and loved it. 

Bye!

Miscellaneous and a Free Day

Continuing with the St Patrick's Day theme, the girls painted green crosses on Monday. I tried to make them with some Celtic flair, and then they put hands and feet on them. The hands and feet are to represent how St Patrick used his hands and feet to share the truth of Jesus with the people in Ireland.

I also did a counting exercise with Caley, to help her identify numbers and what they mean. First the cups were in order left-to-right and top-to-bottom, then I mixed them up. 

Friday we had a free day! I was going to do the reading book with Caley but didn't want to interrupt the girls doing this:

Learning to play nicely with your sister is an important skill, and I don't want to ruin a good thing!

Then we went to downtown Mukilteo and finally used some gift certificates from last summer. They got a free mug and cocoa at Whidbey Coffee, a free ice cream, and free balloons! Chocolate face = happy kids.

I also wanted to share this post encouraging homeschooling by Barbara Curtis. You can find it here.

Poems and St Patrick

We have been doing some fun things at Gerlach School lately! We read "Tangerines and Tea, My Grandparents and Me" which has beautiful poetry and wrote an acrostic poem using the girls names. 

We are also learning about St Patrick and St Patrick's Day. This holiday is a great time to teach about making green out of blue and yellow, things that are green, things that aren't and of course about the Patrick the man who shared Jesus with much of Ireland in the 5th century. So this month will be full of shamrocks, things that are green, and maybe some St Patrick books. We are also part Irish so maybe we'll throw that in to, but I'm not sure how. I might even bust out some corned beef and cabbage on March 17th in the name of our kid's education. 

Shaving Cream with green food coloring--yes it was a mess to clean up! The girls went from straight from here to the bathtub because their hands and arms were all green!

Tomorrow we are going to the retirement center for card making with the residents which should be a lot of fun. We've been to the center before and the seniors can't get enough of little kids!!

Of Presidential Things

My favorite president is Abraham Lincoln. I remember learning about him in kindergarten around this time of year because of President's Day. We learned mostly about Lincoln and Washington from what I can remember. Since then I've loved reading books about President Lincoln and I have a copper bust that I've always had on my desk or bookshelf. Right now the bust is Amelia's bookend and Caley likes to look at it because it's right at her eye level. She knows who Abraham Lincoln is too. Last week in church preschool I taught about Abraham in the Bible, and Caley got him confused with Abraham the president. 

On Friday we had a busy day planned so we didn't do school as usual. Instead we just read books and Caley wanted to read this one about President Lincoln. This beautiful book, "Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln" blends Lincoln's own writing with a biography of his life, set to beautiful paintings of scenes of the time. There are paintings of Lincoln as a boy, slave workers in a cotton field, war-torn America, and a half-finished Capitol building as it was when Lincoln was inaugurated as president. Caley was surprisingly interested in the book and I was happy to teach her. I pulled out her United States map placemat and folded it in half (East and West) to show her that when Lincoln was president, there were less states than there are now. She is very interested in "where do we live" on the map so I told her that when Lincoln was president, there were less people in our country and out in Washington there were lots of trees. Then when the book started to explain the Civil war, I again folded the map in half (North and South) to show her that the country was divided because people didn't agree. Surprisingly, she seemed to understand a lot of what I was saying, but I did simplify things. Obviously, there's much more she can learn and understand as she gets older, but it was really fun to have a mini-history lesson, totally unplanned by me.

Since yesterday was President's Day, Caley watched this video I found on the blog MommyLife. She laughed at the silly morphing of the president's faces, and she recognized Lincoln! 

Prepositions

My friend Ashley suggested a fun way to teach prepositions by using stickers! I drew a house and flowers on paper and asked Caley to place the stickers next to, on, above and below the objects. When the paper got full, we moved onto putting stickers on, above, below and next to our eyes, noses and mouths. Thanks Ashley!

We all look tired, and are still wearing jammies but that's the way we're most comfortable...the best way to learn!

Caley is still plugging away at her reading book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We are on Lesson 22. Here's a recent lesson Caley read. We had already read through the story a few times, so it's familiar to her, but still she's doing a great job decoding and gathering information!! Nice work girlie.