Homeschooling Update: January 2014

January was an interesting month. We both had trouble getting back into the swing of things after Christmas, but we jumped back into it.

The first of the month we started On the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the next book in the Little House series and just finished it this week. We both loved it and are getting ready to start the next one.

Every day we do a Bible Story and prayer time and then they do their devotional at bedtime with Jared.

Each week she's reading at least 3 books, doing 2 creative writing stories (basically she draws a picture and writes a sentence or two about it) and does 1 page of copywork (she's writing through the Beatitudes now).
Here's a summary of some of the things we did this month.

The 1st week of January was from 1/6-1/10:

• Our book of the week was Katy and the Snow. We talked about maps, read another cute book called Mapping Penny's World, and drew a map of Arabelle's room. 
• The first day back to school, we did a big review day.
• We moved on in the phonics lessons, added some new sight words, played sight word memory games, & Arabelle read a few stories in her phonics primer. 
• We also read a lot of fun snow books from the library!

The 2nd week of January was from 1/13-1/17:

• Our book of the week was Abe's Fish. We did the Lincoln Memorial virtual tour on the computer. Both kids really found it interesting. Bo kept wanting me to 'walk' us out into the reflecting pool. ;)
• We discussed fish and how they 'breathe' with their gills and talked about freshwater versus saltwater fish. We found some really good library books with fish themes! 
• Arabelle did a rainbow fish craft, but I don't have a picture of it. Oops!
• We also discussed the history of the US flag and flag etiquette.
• Arabelle and Bo did a flag painting. Can you guess which one is Bo's?  

• This week had a phonics assessment, where she had to write 10 CVC words and 10 of her sight words. She did great on the CVC words and had some trouble writing the sight words. She can read them all, but writing is a different story. She tries to write them phonetically, then looks at them and knows it's wrong. She'll get it. :)

The 3rd week of January was from 1/20-1/24:

• Our book this week was a cute fictional Groundhog Day themed book, but I can't remember what it was called. ;)
• We talked about hibernation, migration, and adaptation and discussed the different animals who do each. 
• We read some fun fictional books about hibernating bears and they made a bear den to hibernate in. 
• Arabelle made a 'polar bear' with some warm fur made out of rice. 

•  She also made a bear den with her hibernated bear. 

• Arabelle added the letter x this week, so she made new words to read, like fox, ax, etc. She read several stories. 

The 4th week was from 1/27-1/31:

• Our book of the week was one from Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad series, but our library didn't have it. We read Frog and Toad Together, another one of Lobel's. 
• We discussed metamorphosis and checked out some library books about it. 
• We also each drew a frog from one of the library books. They both chose to draw some colorful poisonous ones (no pic again, sorry!). 
• We kept on going with the phonics and math, of course.