School Time!

We've finished over a month of kindergarten! Our curriculum and plan is working pretty well so far. After breakfast we pull out the workbooks and H picks which subject she would like to start with, usually her phonics/reading workbook or math. Handwriting is not a favorite for some reason. She thinks she isn't good at it, which I don't think is true, but maybe she is feeling some twinges of perfectionism? (Gee, I wonder where she gets that from!) I've been giving her short breaks in between workbooks to play with her sisters or practice her piano. I think she's having a hard time knowing that they are playing in the other room without her. But I've been talking up the benefits of homeschooling, that she is able to take breaks to play with her sisters. I can't imagine her being gone all day right now. . .she seems so young, and yet so grown up at the same time!

After lunch we've been doing "literature time", where I read a chapter out of a bigger, older book. So far we've read through 1 1/2 books of the old Winnie-the-Pooh series that I had as a young girl and the girls love it. Some of the stories are similar to the modern ones so they recognize them. Even M is enjoying the stories. I can't wait to continue this tradition and move into other series, like Little House or Narnia.

Most of the time, G and M just do their own thing while I am teaching H (with the exception of literature time), though some days we do an impromptu project (like the Apple Trees pictured here). Many days, when M hears me talking to H about her homework, M will walk over to the cupboard and get out her workbook and say, "Mah, ho-mo, too" (meaning "my homework, too!") I usually do a couple of matching pages with her and she is thrilled to be a big girl like H! I've been working some with G on her reading as well, and she's getting it, but it has been interesting to see that she is learning to read differently than H did (she's more auditory, H is more visual). We do family devotions at dinner and Bible time with Daddy before bed, so school kind of stretches through the day, with many breaks in between, which right now is working well for us.