Wednesday, July 24, 2013

School

Leilani has been wanting to do school since before Kindergarten was out, so we've been doing a light load over the summer. This week, we've started a regular work load. So far in our school, we've made a model of the Nile (the grass is growing, now!), made the Pharaoh's crowns and scepter, and written our names in Cuneiform on clay and Hieroglyphs on paper. We've read about the first nomads, wandering around and how they became farmers, how Egypt became united, and, of course, the first writing. We've learned a little bit about Egyptian myths. Leilani was quite fascinated by Set killing Osiris and Osiris coming back to life, by Isis getting pregnant off her dead husband (Osiris) and having Horus, who was born on Christmas. Actually, it's quite fascinating, because all the solar gods are born at the Winter Solstice. I find all the religious myths incredibly fascinating. (We're using The Story of the World Level 1 and the activity book that goes with it)

In science we're learning about all kinds of different animals - we started off by learning about habitat, migration, defense, camouflage, communication and conservation. From there, we briefly talked about how to know what a mammal is - if it's warm-blooded, has hair/fur, gives birth to live young (excepting the platypus) and has milk to feed it's young, it's a mammal. Leilani has been going around naming all the mammals. She, very wisely, deduced that we're mammals, since we have hair all over our bodies, are warm-blooded, give birth to live young (she has first-hand experience with this, having seen Natalia born last year) and have milk to feed our young-as she made that statement, she looked quite pointedly at me, since I was nursing Natalia at the time. I tell ya, I have one smart little girl :) We've also learned about Cheetahs, Elephants, Rhinos, Hippos and Horses.

Leilani loves her math. She'd do the entire book to the exclusion of all else if I let her.

In English, she's doing phonics, spelling, writing and language. I started off using Spelling Power, but it was a bit too advanced for her, so I found a list online. After I wrote out the list, I lost the link. But it's much better, more her level, and I think it will advance her to be abe to use Spelling Power next year. I got Hooked on Phonics, which she's loving - mainly because it's partly on the computer. We're using First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, we've learned the poem "The Caterpillar" and we're learning about nouns - common and proper. For writing we're using "The Complete Writer: Writing with Ease Level 1"...it's quite simple, days 1 and 3 are copying out sentences in her best handwriting, and days 2 and 4 are narration and I write it out. This is to help her learn to write well and learn to put her own thoughts into words, that way she'll be able to put her thoughts into words, then onto paper.

We're going to be reading a good number of chapter books out loud - we finished Little House in the Big Woods on Monday and started Charlotte's Web yesterday. The girls love me reading out loud.

So far, we're loving it, having lots of fun, and most importantly - learning lots of stuff.