...and things are going pretty well! Milly is getting used to the idea of doing something on her own for a few minutes here and there while Rachael and I do schoolwork, and that's a tremendous help. Rachael is learning so much - Bible verses, common and proper nouns, pronouns, syllables, alphabetizing, telling time on an analog clock (she finally got that pesky skip counting by fives thing down pat!), planets, gravity... It's a good thing she loves to learn!
The only thing she isn't enjoying so much is handwriting. She seems to have a generous amount of "don't want to" combined with a dash of "don't care", and that makes it a bit of a struggle some days. We've started the first grade Handwriting Without Tears book, and that's a little easier for her. She still has a tendency to make sloppy letters in an effort to rush through the lesson, continues to mix up her b's and d's, and makes several of her numbers (2, 3, 7 and 9) backward. What to do with her? Everything else is so easy for her - maybe this will just "click" one day as well.
It's been a while since my last update - would you like to see pictures of what we've been up to?
Well, we have school outside in our pajamas sometimes. Just another perk of living in the middle of nowhere! Rachael has a nature journal that she draws in every day - anything interesting that she finds outside. In this picture, she's sketching her beloved tomato plant. Going to need quite a few more of those next year, I think.
We still have our "pet" turtles in a makeshift pond outside, and Rachael and Milly love to go out and watch them every day. They're in charge of feeding them, and once in a while we get a good action shot of them fighting over their breakfast. In this picture, Ruby is snapping at Felicity. Ruby is quite a bit larger and tends to be a bit of a bully, but Felicity gets her licks in too. We've added one more turtle since this picture was snapped - as with the others, Gene rescued Lilly from the middle of the road. Rachael knows that, with fall approaching, we'll have to set the turtles free soon, and she isn't terribly thrilled at the idea.
We play a lot of games, and Math Bingo is one of her favorites. She uses the manipulative blocks from our Math-U-See curriculum to help her add the big numbers, but she's starting to remember a lot of the smaller sums now. The pink card is always, always hers.
Coloring (okay, scribbling) is one of Milly's favorite schooltime activities. Anything with Dora's face on it is a BIG hit with her right now.
We finally made the balloon model of the solar system today. They're lined up in order from the sun - the big orange balloon - and even though it was officially stripped of planet status, she wanted Pluto to be included. (That's the little purple speck behind Neptune.) I thought that it would be appropriate to hang her solar system over her WALL-E poster, and she agreed. However, I'm not very happy with the whole thing. Her astronomy book actually outlined this project, using the balloons, and the diameter of several of them were so small that you couldn't even put air into them. Not to mention that NONE of the planets are actually ROUND. It's odd...I feel styrofoam balls and paint in our future.
This little monkey likes to steal the teacher's chair every chance she gets - and if she can grab a pen and scribble in the lesson book, so much the better.
We've had two Thursday morning co-ops now, and both have gone well. Rachael loves going to learn with her friends - and play in between lessons, of course. So far, she's made her own personal timeline in history...
...sorted shoes to learn about taxonomy and classification (this was a drawing of the process afterward)...
...and done leaf rubbings while examining the symmetry of several leaves' veins.
Naturally, Milly also works very hard while Rachael is in class.
After history, science, Bible and art comes lunch - where Rachael can be found at the end of the table with her "boy best friend", Patrick...who she will marry and have a hundred little girls with someday (the first two being named Genevieve and Lacey), but for now, they're just friends. Daddy is only moderately displeased, having seen for himself that Patrick is a very polite young man. :)
Then comes P.E. before heading home. Needless to say, we don't do a lot of other schoolwork at home on co-op days - just reading and math.
So, there's our week three update! We had two weeks to get into a routine without worrying much about outside activities. This week, Girl Scout meetings and craft time at the library resumed, as will gymnastics on Thursday. Thankfully, those are all late afternoon and evening activities, so we can still knock out schoolwork (and Milly's nap - very important) before rushing off to those.
More to come soon...!
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