Friday Five: School Edition

This past week I decided to start working with Isabelle on what we are calling school.  I hesitate to use that term or the term homeschool because to me it seems like we are just doing things that normal parents do with their kids. 

Here are five of the things we have worked on this week!

1.  Calendar Skills.  You know, things like days of the week, months of the year, what day in the month it is, knowing today, tomorrow and yesterday, those kinds of things.  We sing the days of the week song from Signing Time and then I found a months of the year song on youtube here and since my girls love singing, these songs are perfect for them.  I also printed off some blank calendars from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com and laminated them so that we can write in the numbers as we go along.

2.  Letter sounds.  This week we learned about the letter a.   We also have a song for that, "The a says ah, the a says ah, every letter makes a sound the a says ah."  (I have a video I tried to post of belle singing it, but it never loaded..ugh!)

3.  Motor skills.  Isabelle has been writing her name, letters and numbers and we have been working to learn to use scissors.  The writing is going great, but scissors are harder than I expected.  That said, after four times of using them she was able to cut along lines that I drew on paper for her very well.  I was impressed!

4.  Bible Verse memorization.  We have a verse that goes with the letter of the week.  This week was Romans 3:23.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory.  A pretty somber verse, but one that starts with A.  And I do think it was nice to talk about that everybody makes mistakes and everyone needs Jesus.

5.  Math.  Okay, math might be stretching it, but we are learning to identify numbers (Molly), work with patterns (Isabelle) and other pre-math type skills.

Next week we will start letter e.  I am planning to introduce all vowels first, then consonants so that we can work on blends with each consonant.  As long as the girls stay interested we will do as much as time allows during the day.  I am sure that they will get bored with school eventually, so I am going to take advantage while I can!