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Here is what our first day looked like….
- Spell to Write & Read Word List A – Jonathan sounded out the words that I said aloud for him. He wrote the first two on his whiteboard. Then he told me which letters to write for the rest of the ten words. Then he traced the words that I wrote on paper for him and read the whole list to me.
- Pathway Pre-Primer Workbook – We finished the first workbook section that he started a few days ago. He read some of the book itself to Grandma and Grandpa over Skype last night and read more in our bed later in the evening. His reading really took off last week. The workbook so far has had true/false questions about the story for which he had to write yes or no next to the statement, some fill in the blank with the missing word from a list of words, and some fill in the missing letter from the words. He had the hardest time filling in the missing letter if the missing letter was at the beginning of the word. Otherwise, he did great with the workbook and proved that his comprehension is tracking well with with his reading ability.
- Calendar – We have a calendar with laminated stick on month and days. We talked about the days of the week and what day it is today.
- Sonlight P4/5 – This is the actual core of his curriculum. Everything else I have added. Today we read about Mother Goose, Rabbit and Tiger Save the World, and Baby Chick. His favorite book was the Berenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature. He insisted that we keep reading – so we read everything for the week from this book! There is a workbook in this core that works on various types of learning skills. The page for today was left-right motor skills and he did the page perfectly.
- Bible – Memory verse and Bible reading are part of the core curriculum, but I'm splitting it out here to more easily show you what we're doing. Today we introduced the memory verse for the week; well actually we did it last night. I wrote the verse out on paper so he could trace it. Then he and daddy worked on sounding out the words and reading it. Now we're working on memorizing it. It is “Pay attention, my child, to what I say. Listen carefully.” Proverbs 4:20. The corresponding character trait is “Attentiveness: I listen with my eyes, ears, and heart.” He can already repeat the verse with some help as well as the character trait.
- Math – We're keeping math low-key and practical for now. When we were done with everything else today, he chose to play with his Mighty Mind puzzle for a little bit.
What I cannot believe is that SWR spelling words through the Sonlight core reading and activities only took about an hour. We've talked about the memory verse today, but did all the work last night. Now, after Mighty Mind, he is happily building a track and playing with his trains as I write this post. I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to get everything done. I was concerned that he couldn't pay attention long enough to get through it all. To my surprise, he did very well. There were a few times when I had to remind him that if we don't finish our school work then there's no movie or computer game time and that helped bring him back to reality. Computer time includes Hooked on Phonics French and PBS Kids games online. He didn't want to miss out on either of those!
Tomorrow will be a little different. I have an OB appointment first thing in the morning so I told him that we could take our school work with us and do it at Starbucks after my appointment. He was thrilled with that. How many kids get to do school at Starbucks?
