Our School Year 2020/2021

This is late (as usual haha), but I'll try and remember what all we did for school.  Abby was in 3rd grade, Evie was in 1st grade, and the toddlers worked on some preschool activities.

Abigail - 3rd Grade:

Abby did a math lesson every day, some sort of reading & language arts, Bible reading, science/history reading and journaling once a week, and sometime during the year I had her start a weekly piano lesson (with daily practice).  We used the free lessons from Hoffman Academy for piano.  I would assist and supplement as needed to make sure she was progressing and if she wasn't ready for a new lesson at the end of the week, I just had her continue practicing until the following one.

For math, we stuck with Saxon.  We still really like it.

We did a science or history lesson, depending on the week.  For science weeks, I would have her choose something she wanted to learn about (some sort of animal was normally her pick).  Then, we would use the internet to find information and read about her topic.  This would usually be assisted reading where she would read and I would help as needed to enhance comprehension.  We ended up using the National Geographic Kids site quite a bit.  They have a really cool section on animals where you can read a manageable amount and watch a video clip/see pictures as well!  Afterwards, Abby had to write about some things she learned in her science/history journal.  Here are a few excerpts.

For history weeks, we would choose a book to work through.  We were on an old west kick for a while.

Abby continued to use this Bible for her daily one chapter reading.  She also had a Bible journal where she would copy our memory verse of the week.

Abby read through the third McGuffey reader this year.  I could move her at a faster rate with those, but it's kind of nice to use it as a supplement each year.  I also really enjoy taking the girls' spelling words from their McGuffey story each week.

I had Abby use this writing journal from Lakeshore (they have some awesome spiral journals!!) for her spelling words and any writing assignments she had from this language lessons book from My Father's World.

Although Abby has been reading Boxcar books for a long time now, I had her read aloud a chapter a week to me for reading fluency practice.  She is a very good reader, but she does tend to be a skimmer.  It was very good for her!  I would hold a bookmark below the words she was reading and if she skipped or incorrectly read a word, the bookmark didn't move until she corrected it.😉😂  In addition, Abby read lots and lots of books on her own.

We added Pathway readers and workbooks to our school this year.  The workbooks were okay (a little tedious and some things were unnecessary, although they did have good things as well and for how dirt cheap they are, it was probably worth it), but the readers were fabulous!  The kids loved them!  The reading level was really easy for Abby, but it was still good for her to work on fluency and expressive reading.  The books have very moral, fun to read, relatable (for us) stories that are so perfect and fun.  I believe we got these from Rainbow Resources and they were very affordable!  Make sure you buy enough to get the free shipping and it's well worth it!

Here's one of my favorite spiral writing journals from Lakeshore.  It has nice, thick pages and a section for a picture every couple pages.  I had Abby use this for her longer writing assignments.

Evelyn - 1st Grade:

Not pictured above is her math, Bible journal, and draw and write journal.  Evie did 1st grade Saxon math on a daily basis.

Evie read through the 1st McGuffey reader and copied/practiced 5 spelling words from the story each week, culminating with a test on Friday.

There were three sets of Pathway readers/workbooks for 1st grade.  We went into the summer a bit as we moved through these fairly slowly, but we enjoyed them!

We had Evie read through this Bible reader from My Father's World.  We used it for Abby in 1st grade also and really like it.  She would copy down a sentence or two from her reading and draw a picture.  In the beginning, I would write what she needed to copy up above.  As the year went on, she just copied it out of the book herself.

Lastly, I had Evie read to me out of various books we have, such as the one pictured below.  After reading for a while, she would copy something out of the section she read and draw a picture in her draw & write book.  This is the primer level draw and write journal from Lakeshore.  I love all of their spiral journals for beginning writers!!

Preschool:

With the preschoolers I read a lot of books, alphabet/number books, various alphabet activities to reinforce letter sounds/names, simple math like counting, etc.