Our School Year 2018/2019

I intended to post this a while ago, but better late than never!😝 This was our first year doing a more formal year of homeschooling. I have done lots of "school time" with crafts and learning over the years, but this year we declared Abby to be a 1st grader and Evelyn to be a preschooler. Basically, it was our intention to begin daily, more structured school.

Cabz leaves for work before the kids get up, so I read a little Bible with them all over breakfast each morning. Then, we do our school time. Evie's main focus is easily recognizing all letters and sounds (there are just a couple she still mixes up at times), starting to write letters, and doing a bit of beginning reading. A couple times a week I try to have her practice counting a handful of something or other as well.

My Crayola dry erase board works great for letter practice (garage sale find from years ago! #winning). I often have Evie read a handful of words from her word card box. Most of the words in her box are from her big books. Every time she starts a new big book, I add those words to her box.

Sometimes Evelyn uses my tub of letter cubes to practice spelling out her word cards.

One of Evelyn's favorite school activities is using Easy Peasy (a free online curriculum). The two toddlers get a kick out of doing that part of her school with her. It mainly consists of learning letter videos. I also have Evie do a small portion of the McGuffey primer on there.

A highlight for the girls is our science day. My goal is to go through the alphabet and have them alternate weeks picking an animal with that week's letter. We watch a few youtube videos learning about the animal they choose and then Evie copies the animal's name in her science journal and draws a picture of them. Abby comes up with a couple sentences and copies those down in her journal. For a while, I did well having Friday be our science day. Then, it somehow transitioned to Daddy time on Saturdays. haha Oops. Thanks, Cabz.😘

Here's a couple entries from Evie's science journal:

Now for Abby's school....

We want to largely focus on improving her reading ability, since that helps everything else become more independent! She already finished the McGuffey Primer, so we're having her start the McGuffey First Eclectic Reader.

Typically, Abby reads one McGuffey story every Monday morning. Part way through the year, I decided to start collecting a weekly spelling list for her from those stories. She likes that quite a bit, especially when she gets 100%. (lil' perfectionist😂)

On Tuesdays, Abby reads a story from her Bible reader. This is a 1st grade reader from My Father's World curriculum. We really like using this! After reading a story, she writes an entry in her Bible journal. In the beginning of the school year, this meant copying down the story title. Later on, this switched to coming up with a couple of summarizing sentences to copy.

Wednesday through Friday I have Abby read various other books we have. She reads a lot of level 3 books at this point. Outside homeschooling for the win!

Abigail is working her way through Saxon 1 (the 1st grade Saxon) for math. So far, it has been pretty easy for her, but it seems like a better fit than the 2nd grade. Although it isn't overly challenging for her, there are quite a few things we haven't gone over before, so it's good for her. 👍 She usually enjoys her school time quite a bit.

We started school the week I had a baby (Josie), so that's why I look a bit, well....😫

Abby loves learning about our animal for the week! Her science journal time is definitely a favorite. I write down the sentences she comes up with and she copies them down as I watch and guide letters.