Teacher Conferences

I had conferences with Butterfly and Ladybug's teachers. Both are excelling in Reading which just thrills me! I focus a lot of time on reading because I think it is really important. Butterfly is tied for the most books read this year in her class and Ladybug is in the advanced readers club. They are reading Biscuit books right now so they called themselves The Biscuit Club.

Apparently I need to focus a little more time on Math. They are both doing well in math but it isn't really easy for them either.

I had originally wanted to wait until March before ordering in curriculum for next year but decided to go ahead and order Math-U-see to use now with all of the girls. I think they could all use a little more work in this area. PF has an hour of math homework every  night so I will probably only be working with her on her days off and weekends until next year.

All of my girls also need help with handwriting. They come by this problem honestly because both their parents have horrible handwriting. I ordered them Handwriting without Tears to help with this.

So afternoons will consist of:
*school homework
*Math-U-See
*Sight Word Flash cards
*Handwriting without tears
*Reading
*Sensory Therapy
*Playtime
*Chores
*Piano practice

They are busy girls!

Facing Change

Change seems to be a huge part of our lives. I don't know whether being a military family makes it even harder or not. But with change, we have to face new ways of doing things and be open to different ways of doing it. Yesterday, we started Butterfly on Kindergarten curriculum. I knew that giving two kids full curriculum instruction was going to change things. We tried to run things like we had normally yesterday but that was a huge failure so I knew today we had to make some major adjustments. To my surprise things have gone much smoother today. Ladybug has been interested in participating with some of Butterfly's work. She did a great job practicing to write the letter "I". Abeka has a fun way of teaching writing which the girls have grasped quickly and are enjoying. Example: Capital "I" is a straight stick with a little hat and little shoes.


A big change I made was making sure we took frequent breaks to just be silly. After doing Calendar, Social Studies and Science, I put on some loud praise music and we sang and danced for awhile. Then we did Kindergarten Language, writing and numbers and took a break to play in a pile of leaves.

I have made Princess Flower my teacher's aid in the mornings and she assists with Dragonfly and sometimes Ladybug while I do things with Butterfly. We were doing this the first few weeks of school but it didn't seem necessary to continue at the time. Now I am seeing the use of it again. Butterfly's work only takes alittle over an hour right now, I am sure it will take longer as the lessons continue. Princess Flower starts school after lunch. This is also helpful to her because there are less distractions after lunch because of naps. Her work unfortunately takes alot longer.

I am hoping these adjustments will make things run smoother but we will remain flexible.

Princess Flower's Schedule

For right now (we change depending on the particular area we are focusing on) Princess Flower's schedule looks like this:
8:00am- breakfast, get dressed, calendar time and devotion.
9:00am- Start schoolwork to include:
Bible Study lesson
Math worksheet
Daily worksheet (a review of Lang. Arts & math skills from last year)
Journal writing or writing bug
Spelling words (dictionary, sentences or stories using spelling words)
Read a chapter of the current American Girl Book
Pilgrims comprehension reading (one story about pilgrims and answer questions)
Read about one President (From a book on Presidents.)
Piano practice
11:30- Lunch and chores
12:30- Playground or Free play
1:30- Grammar lesson and review Chinese
2:30- 1 hour of free reading

If time permits we watch a Science or History documentary. For right now we have a heavy focus on History. Some days we have other little things we add in or take out.

On Mondays she has piano lessons, Tuesdays she usually has Chinese lessons (some weeks it is moved to other days) and Wednesday nights kid's class at church. Fridays we take it easy. If she has work she didn't get done on the other 4 days she does it then. We also have fun projects, mostly art related, or play games. This is the day that I use to add in other activities to reinforce what we are already learning.

Mondays

Our schedule varies slightly on Mondays compared to the rest of the week because Princess Flower has piano lessons at 12:45pm. Because we already have to leave the house to go to the lesson, I have incorporated other out of the house places to visit as well. (makes it seem like the gas used goes to cover several different things than just one)

So today we left the house at 9:30am after having morning time and breakfast, and headed to the neighborhood gym. The younger girls played with blocks and other toys while PF did her morning review sheet. While they were busy I got in a quick 30 min run. The treat after the gym is to go to the office (in the same building) and get a cookie. They had really good cookies today. Then we headed to the playground right outside to run off the sugar.

At 11:00am we headed to the Library to stock up on some new books and read a few stories while we were there. I was able to find a couple books that will be incorporated into preschool lessons in the coming weeks and PF picked out a few extra books to read and earn rewards (I will touch on this in another post).

We then headed down to piano lessons and had a picnic lunch at our friends house before the lesson started.

Now we are back home and two kids are napping, one is playing quitely, and PF is finishing the rest of her work for today.