Homeschooling begins

Monday began our first day of school. While I had endeavored to begin homeschooling Kara last year, I was neither disciplined enough to continue or motivated to begin teaching her academics. This past May, JA and I both attended the state homeschool convention where we purchased both preschool and kindergarten materials from My Father's World. I am combining the preschool and kindergarten curriculum's so that I can teach both Kara and Lydia at their appropriate levels.

Here is what we are working on this week:

We begin each day with the daily lessons from "Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." So this week we have been working on perfecting /s/,/m/,/a/. Kara is working on writing "s," "m," and "a;"Kara has also enjoyed lacing shapes (a skill she has already mastered but still enjoys doing); she really enjoys learning to cut following the lines -- especially working on cutting out circles. Kara has been begging me to let her cut with scissors so now she is thrilled.We are integrating classical music into our lessons, so Kara is listening to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" while she works on coloring in the lines. Kara has never really enjoyed coloring, so this is a hard lesson for her to stick with because she wants to quit and go on to whatever is next. For math we have been working on number identification and association.Kara's memory verse for the week is Matthew 7:7 "Ask and it shall be given you, Seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you."

Lydia's schooling is very similar to Kara's as we are doing the same subject as Kara at the same time. However, my expectations are very different.

Lydia's memory verse is also Matthew 7:7 , but I have shortened it so we can also work on enunciation and order. "Ask and it shall be given you, Seek, and ye shall find."

Like Kara, Lydia is also learning to read (she has been able to identify her letters and sounds since she was 2, so I know she is ready to put them together into words). So Lydia is also doing the lessons from "Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." But Lydia's writing lessons are very different from Kara. I am having Lydia work on tracing lines and circles and drawing her own lines and circles. Lydia is also learning to lace shapes, but we are having to focus her on lacing each hole in the order that it is placed around the shape.(sorry the picture is sideways, I couldn't get it to turn)

In order to teach Lydia how to hold the scissors properly I placed a sticker on the side of the scissors that should be facing up. Now she knows that she always needs to keep the sticker facing the ceiling as she cuts the paper.Lydia is also listening to the classical music, and learning to color in the lines. For Math, Lydia is learning to count from 1-10.