Our School Year 2019/2020

Abby and Evie wrapped up another school year!

Kindergarten:

Although we are still doing school through the summer, it's a lot less than normal.  It's the middle of summer now, but I'll try my best to remember everything we worked on this past school year.  I'll start with Evie.  She was our kindergartner.  She was a little young to start kindergarten as she didn't turn 5 until we were a month and a half in, but we figured we can always slow down in the future if things get too tricky or overwhelming.  Perks of homeschooling!

We really like to mainly focus on the skill of reading initially, as it is such a gateway to learning everything else!  I worked with Peanut every morning on her reading and we were so proud of how much she improved after a few months!👏  I tried to switch things up a little every day, so Evie had a little variety in her week.  On Mondays, I would have her read through a story in her McGuffey Primer.  We have really loved using the old McGuffey books as part of our reading curriculum!

We do like the progression of the McGuffey readers, but they do tend to move at a fairly quick pace from one lesson to the next.  It worked really well for Evie to do just 1 lesson a week the first part of the year, moving to 2 lessons a week towards the end of the school year.  Every Tuesday, Evie would get to pick a book to read to me.  At the beginning of the year, she was reading really easy books, like this one.

She kept improving until she was able to read (with some help), through most of our Dr. Seuss books!  She would normally read 3 - 8 pages at a time, depending on the difficulty.

Afterwards, Evelyn got to pick one sentence from her reading as her copy work.  This was always her favorite!  I LOVED using these "Draw & Write" journals from Lakeshore!

It made writing so much fun for her, knowing she would get to add a picture!  They have such nice, large spacing for beginning writers, spiral binding, and sturdy, thick pages.  They are probably my top recommendation for early writers!  I was flipping through her book and there were way too many favorite pages to just pick one. haha  See if you know any of the stories she was reading. ha

On Wednesday, Evie would reread her McGuffey lesson and do a little math.  Math was typically some counting or basic addition/subtraction with one of my manipulatives.

Thursdays were kind of a random day.  If the McGuffey story needed more work, we would reread it again.  Usually, I would have Evelyn do some sort of copy work in her "Writing Book" also.  Her writing book was one of these from Wal-mart.  We liked using them for their cheapness and to spread out use of the more exciting Draw & Write journal.  Nothing fancy and the pages are way too thin, but they worked well for the price.

Evelyn's copy work would often be a few words from her McGuffey lesson that week.  Earlier in the year, it was 3 words.  As time went on, she moved up to 6, per her request. haha  I would usually write the word first, then she would copy it as many times as she could fit on that line.  She works really hard to write neatly most of the time!  Sometimes I think her writing tends to be neater than *ahem* an older sibling.

Peanut was soooo excited when I decided she was old enough to start having spelling tests on Friday like Abby!  She had 3 - 5 words for her spelling tests each week and would spend a little time practicing them most days.  She would either write them in her writing book, form them with some letter cubes, or spell them out loud to me.  This was her very first spelling test!  She aced all of her spelling tests this year.

Another sample spelling test...

Once in a while, we would switch up a normal day activities with something different.  For example, Abby had to write a letter for school one day and Evie wanted to add her contribution to Grammy's letter!  She told me what she wanted to write and then copied it down on her letter.  I thought it was pretty cute!

2nd Grade:

Abby was our 2nd grader this past year.  She was a little young for her grade also, not turning 7 until end of November, but again.... figured if anything proves too difficult, we can always slow things down a bit!

I continued reading Bible with all of the kids each morning (usually while they ate breakfast).  We've been reading through one chapter of Proverbs each week and working on one memory verse from it with a couple of other families in our church.  This is our 2nd time through and it has been so useful and good!  Abby has been reading well enough now that we really wanted her to start doing her own Bible time in addition.  We bought her a regular Bible, but it is the easiest translation out there.  It's supposed to be 3rd grade reading level I think?  We have her read one chapter of it each morning as part of her regular school and so far she has been really enjoying it!

For Abby's math, we continued with Saxon.  It has been a great fit for us, and it was really nice how independently she could do a lot of it already this year!!  I usually skim the lesson, teach her anything new and then she reads through her worksheet and completes it on her own.  Abby did a math lesson (or test), each day of the week.

We had a few different materials we wanted to use for Abby's reading and language arts.  None of them had enough to last the entire school year, so I did a rotation each day (similar idea as Evie).  On Monday, Abby would read her McGuffey Second Eclectic Reader lesson out loud to me.  Although Abby reads at a pretty high level, reading out loud is SO good for her!  It forces her to slow down, work on her expressive reading, and keeps her from skipping over/substituting words she may not recognize.  She will often even do things like read "the" instead of "a" and this is a great way for me to catch all of those little things. 😉

After reading, I would choose ten words from her lesson for Abby to copy down as her spelling test words for the week.  She used this writing journal for that.  My only complaint with this writing journal was that I wish the pages were a little thicker.  Abby loves to erase and we ended up with a few ripped pages as a result.  We used this journal for a myriad of writing activities this year: spelling practice, spelling tests, creative stories, poems/other copy work, etc.

On Tuesday, Abby would copy down our memory verse of the week in her Bible journal and draw a picture to go with it.  This was a spiral notebook (which I love!) and has been okay... same problem with the thin pages.  She drew a picture of a poor girl crying because the other girl had taken her doll and was going to throw it in the garbage.  I'm not sure which girl she intended to portray lacking self-control, but... could have been either/both I suppose? haha  Hmmm...

On Wednesday, Abby got to pick something she wanted to learn about for science.  I'm pretty sure she always picked some kind of animal. haha  I would look up information online and we would do a shared reading of sorts.  She would read what she could, and I'd help out when something was too hard.  Afterwards, she would write down the name of the animal, write a few things she learned, and draw a picture.  We used this primary journal from Wal-mart as her science journal.  It wasn't my favorite because I greatly prefer spiral binding for the kids, but they were cheap so we'll probably use these again for some of our writing journals at least.

Thursdays were for this next book, "Language Lessons for Today."  It's from the curriculum, My Father's World and is a grade 2 reading and language arts book.  We really loved using it!!  It doesn't have enough to do a daily activity, but it was a great supplement to our week.  One example of a lesson would have Abby read a poem.  The next time, she would work on copying it down or memorizing it.  In the beginning of the year, Abby was doing one of these lessons a week.  As we got into the 2nd half of the year, she did more like 2 or 3 each week, just so she could complete it at a similar time as her math.

Another example of a lesson from the MFW book, was learning how to properly write a letter and address the envelope.  Abby was pretty proud of her first letter!

Friday was our spelling test day!  If Abby misspelled a word, it would carry over to her next week's list.  In addition, Abby would get to read a chapter of an American Girl book out loud to me.  Between that and Caleb reading a couple of the American Girl series out loud to the kids, we had our history for the year. haha  Caleb did go more in depth with the kids, talking about the historical time periods and events during those times.

That was the schedule I followed for the most part.  I also brought in this Lakeshore Draw & Write journal part way through the year, which Abby really enjoyed!  This was a creative writing journal for the most part.  It worked great for her!!  Normally, I would give her a list with a few words that she needed to include in her story and then she could write whatever she wanted!  After she finished, we would read through it together and I would talk through any mistakes she had made with punctuation/grammar/spelling, etc.

I think that about wraps it up!  Abby was pretty excited when she started finishing up some of her school books in April!  I was too.  I love starting early and working hard through the chilly months, so we can break out of the house in full force when warm weather hits!

You can tell Abby comes from a large family when she writes stories....  She always has about fifty million characters and you can't even keep up with who's who!😂😂