Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Drama Through the Rec Center

Every quarter the city mails a Recreation Guide.  I scoured it looking for activities that I thought may help us achieve our homeschooling goals.  CJ has struggled with shutting down physically and mentally when faced with an unfamiliar situation.  I thought that the local drama class may help him.  We toured the library where it was to take place a week before class started.  I find it's always helpful to go "explore" a new place before being required to go there for an activity.  The theme for the drama class was "Dr. Seuss".  Every day they would read a new story and act it out.  At the end the parents would return and they'd put on their dramatic telling of the book they'd just practiced.  It turned out great and was an interesting experience to see CJ tap into some facial expressions and character traits. 

Friday, September 6, 2013

Into September 2013

We've made it into September of our first "official" homeschool year.  I feel like things are going swimmingly.  It is quite often that CJ wakes up early and we're able to get our lessons done for the day before EMan even wakes up.  We've been continuing our work on our TouchMath book which has now shifted into simple addition up to 5.  CJ has really taken to it and is mastering it quite a bit faster than I had previously expected.  CJ has still been struggling with numbers to 100 which TouchMath introduces in their first unit but doesn't take the idea to mastery.  We've opened up our MathUSee Primer to start working on the basic understanding of place value of numbers to 100.  It's slow work, but eventually we'll get there.  The boys are enjoying more laundry responsibilities these days and are loving our reading time together. 

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Playing in the Mud

It is so lovely to find a nice patch of mud to explore.  I often find the perfectly taken care of park to be a rather boring place to play as it puts constraints on our children's actions.  I wish we could stumble upon mud puddles more often.  How about you?