Sunday, December 16, 2007

Homeschools wrap-up for this week

L's about done with the "In the Beginning" workbook. And I think we only have 3 books left in the set of Bob books we have. I'm really hoping we can find the next set(s) at the library, don't want to spend money on them as fast as she goes through them, but they are really working well to keep her moving forward. An online friend mentioned that her dd learned to sound out words but took awhile to move beyond sounding out every.single.word every time she came to it & I'm definitely seeing that w/ L too. Words that she knew as sight words before she decided she needed to learn to read, she now sounds out. Not sure how to move beyond that, so just giving it time at this point, though when she sounds out words she previously knew, I do point out that she knows that word.

We made pinecone birdfeeders this week (rolled pinecones in peanut butter, then birdseed, and hung them in trees). I haven't seen any birds on them yet, but hopefully we'll see some at some point (&/or see obvious evidence that they've eaten the birdseed, even that would satisfy the girls LOL.

We also made gifts for the grandparents, etc. and got them under the trees. The girls are very excited about this, and were also thrilled to be able to get their gifts for each other under the tree yesterday (when Daddy was home to keep one kid entertained while I helped the other one "wrap" their gift).

I'd hoped to get some Christmassy fabric and make all cloth "wrapping paper" this year, but that didn't happen, so decided instead to re-use gift bags I already have (and some cloth bags I got to use on the trips we took this fall, and I have some Christmas fabric in my "stash" that I can use if I need to). I'm hoping to not use any wrapping paper because of the environmental impact, so far so good LOL. And so far the girls haven't complained that "wrapping" gifts hasn't involved lots of tape & such LOL.

Kindermusik continues to go well. At this point I think the girls would be fine with letting me leave the room if I had a good "excuse" but it's kind of fun to watch what the kids do, and I'm not sure they'd react well to me going out to sit in the hall "just because" so I've stayed. It occurred to me yesterday that during Kindermusik would be a time to check the various classrooms to see if they happened to have the top 2/3 of my Christmas tree, so I might do that next week, at least for the unlocked rooms, not sure if L (the teacher) would let me borrow her key to check the locked rooms. And I hate to bother the church secretary, though if it's only one or two rooms that are locked, I might ask her.

The girls were telling Miss M (their SS teacher) about our tree not going together and such yesterday, so I think they'd consider it a valid "excuse" for me to go hunting for the tree (though they might think they need to help me look LOL).

Speaking of SS, not sure what flipped the switch, but the girls were super chatty this week, at least for the first half. They've been more comfortable around Miss M, since the week that we were the first ones to class & she asked them to help her set up the craft, and when we got there this week it was just Miss M, and the girls' friends, A&J, so that helped, but then even once more people had come, they kept on being chatty & participating and such. One of the other moms commented that she'd never heard them talk before LOL. Then halfway through we went to the nursing home next door to sing a couple songs, and that popped the girls back into their shells, sigh . . . they sat on our laps when we got back, and generally didn't participate except for craft. The WERE ok with me leaving for a little while during craft (and dh had disappeared at that point too) when I told them I needed to take something to Miss K in the Beginner's room.

The Advent calendar we're doing is starting to teach simple subtraction. The girls insist on counting how many days are left each time we do that day's book & sticker. But then they revisit "how many days till Christmas" 1001 times each day (more or less LOL). When they ask BEFORE we've done the calendar for that day, I ask them how many days it was yesterday & then point out that today would be one less. It still takes some figuring, but they can usually get to the right answer. One of them (I don't remember which) was counting backwards from 10 yesterday too, not sure where she learned that, but she was doing it flawlessly LOL.

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