I’ve been a major blogging slacker lately, but I thought I’d share some of the things Turkey and Bunny are really enjoying in school right now.
We’ve almost made it through the Old Testament in Egermeier’s Bible Storybook. I’ve found this to be an excellent Bible storybook–it doesn’t dumb the stories down too much, and it includes way more of the Biblical narrative than most storybooks do. We’re also still working on memorizing the six chief parts of the Catechism, which sadly has turned into the five chief parts, because we never remember to do the last one on Saturday. We’ll have to work on that if they’re ever to learn confession!
They’ve (mostly) mastered the basics of addition (although we haven’t approached carrying numbers yet–but give it a few weeks, and we’ll be there!), and we’ve moved on to subtraction. While Turkey breezed right through adding, and Bunny struggled for some time to memorize the addition facts, the tables have turned, and she’s having an easy time subtracting, while Turkey has to work at it. Actually, I think the role reversal has been really good for both of them, for different reasons!
Their reading is really progressing–there’s really not too much they can’t sound out now. But they’re both still intimidated by books with a lot of words on the page, so they haven’t started reading chapter books in the way I had hoped. We’re working on that hurdle.
Speaking of reading, we’ve had some read-alouds lately that they’ve loved. Dolphin Adventure and Dolphin Treasure (neither of which I had read before) were *huge* hits, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is equally popular. The books they’re loving more than any other right now, though, are the Grandma’s Attic books. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me–I still remember getting my first (of many) copies of In Grandma’s Attic at an Amish-run restaurant in Pennsylvania when I was about seven. I have read the series so many times over the years, I know them by heart. I was hoping that the children wouldn’t find them boring, and to my delight, they love them, even Moose and Ladybug! It’s become a favorite part of our pre-bedtime ritual to read a few chapters.
Turkey and Bunny continue to be fascinated by all things science–as soon as it gets a little warmer, we’ll have a small butterfly garden in our home, so we can watch the whole life cycle of caterpillar to butterfly. We also had a great time sprouting bean seeds (although our attempts to transplant them to small pots didn’t go so well!).
So, that’s what we’ve been up to. We did have a special two-week long Olympics unit was really fun, and included a family field trip to a local ice skating rink. I have to come up with some spring and summer themed field trips–I’m pretty sure strawberry picking will be involved at some point!