Oh dear

You poor, sad, sorry, and neglected blog. I have let you down.

We are gearing up to the beginning of 2009! This will officially be E6’s first year of home school and we’ll be taking a bit more of a dedicated approach this year. Last year was a year of finding our feet, seeing what works for us and what doesn’t.

E6 is excited about her new books. We are going to use some A Beka books for Language, and Math-U-See for maths. I like the visual and hands on learning in this curriculum as well as the lesson plan and instructional dvd for me! I feel more confident knowing that I’ll have help to teach maths. It’s one subject that I feel you really don’t want to mess up, given that it’s sequential and builds concept upon concept.

When E6′ s new books arrived, B4 was quite disappointed he didn’t get any. He’s very keen to learn so we’ll probably get some books for him to do as well. He’s keen to learn his numbers, and is confident with learning his letter sounds using the Jolly Phonics books we used with E6 last year.

E6 is still reading a lot. She is a capable reader and reads chapter books comfortably. I haven’t heard her read aloud much lately though so when school starts I’ll include that in our week in a non-pressured way to make sure her vocab is alright. I have a feeling she skips over tricky words…I’d like to help her grow rather than skip them. She’s a champion though! I’m so proud of her!

Word Girl!

The other day E5 and I were weeding the flower bed and after making several piles of weeds on the path, E5 got the broom out to sweep up. She swept the path from one end to the other gathering up the piles as she went until she was struggling to push along a huge pile of weeds.

“This pile is getting a bit cumbersome Mum.”

“Yes, it is! Where did you learn that word?”

“I don’t know.”

Later she remembered that it was from Word Girl…something she’s been playing with on the PBS kids website.

“Cumbersome means bulky and awkward” she told me later in the day.

Rainy Day in the Morning

This is B3’s finished painting number 1.

And his second one. His hand is in the photo to ‘make it cooler’.

E5’s first one…

and her second one.

R1’s painting was quite cute, but he tore it and screwed it up when I wasn’t looking.

Writing Letters

E5 wanted to write to her friend. She asked me to help, so I wrote out what she wanted to say and she copied it. Writing a real letter to a friend is way more fun that doing a worksheet, or copying words in a book! She’s quite excited  to see if she’ll get a reply.

The Red Bird

The Red Bird – Astrid Lindgren

I stumbled upon this book at our library, and with no more than a glance at it noticed the authors name and brought it home. We loved Pippi Longstocking, so I wanted to read this one too.

What a different book this turned out to be. It’s a short story about two poor children, Matthew and Anna who after the death of their mother end up working for a harsh farmer. They are cold and hungry and ‘cried a great deal when no one was watching’. Describing their days ‘as gray as the mice in the barn’, they will themselves to survive until the winter when they will be able to go to school every day for a few weeks.

When winter finally comes they do attend school, but are disappointed by the cruelty of the other children and nearly freeze on their long hungry walks through the snow. One day however a beautiful red bird appears who leads them to a mysterious place inside a wall where it is spring time.

Anna stretched out her hands towards the bird and wept.

“He’s red,” she said, “oh, he is red!”

Matthew cried too and said,

He does not even know that there are gray mice in the world.”

Called Sunnymead, it is filled with ‘the loveliness of spring’. Matthew and Anna play with other children and are given plenty of good food to eat.

“Then Matthew and Anna followed the other children across the meadow to a little cottage, and there was Mother. You could see that it was Mother, she had a mother’s eyes and a mother’s hands, and her eyes and hands were enough for all the children who crowded around her. She had cooked pancakes for them and she had baked bread”…

Each day after school the red bird leads them there however they always leave in time to get home to milk the cows before they are in trouble with the farmer.

Finally it is the last day of school and the children contemplate their lives without the daily joy of Sunnymead to comfort them and make a decision which will change everything. (Not telling the ending!)

This beautiful story is sad and tender and beautiful. It reminded me of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl. I wasn’t sure at first about reading it to E5 given that it touches some tough subjects, but in the wonderful way of the child she enjoyed the magic of the story and it’s redemptive ending.

It is illustrated by Marit Tornqvist. The pictures evoke the emotions along with the text at each part of the story, particularly with the use of colour….gray’s and browns for their ‘mouse-life’, stark white for the icy winter where the contrast of the red bird is so beautiful and brilliant springy greens for their happy moments in Sunnymead.

I loved this book. I’m not sure it will be my childrens’ favourite, but it has become one of mine.

School Holiday fun

These school holidays just gone, the kids and I participated in a school holiday program run by our church. (I posted about it over here.)

They had heaps of fun and finished with a bang on the last day with face painting. Aren’t they beautiful?

Big Pictures

The other day D stuck a few large pieces of paper on the wall, grabbed some markers and started to draw. Of course the kids joined in, (including R1, which resulted in more pen marks on the walls that on the paper) and this is E5’s work. She worked away at it quietly.

She has paid attention to detail…I have curly long hair, Dad is tall with short hair, B3 has spiky hair, R1 is in my arms with no hair at all, and she has drawn herself with long hair. I love our tummies! And that we are all holding hands.

Counting

Here’s another free printable worksheet we used when E5 was learning to count to 100. (She’s still mastering it!) It can be found here.

You can’t tell in the picture, but she had to trace the words and numerals in the bottom line.

Learning to write

To help E5 learn how to write her letters, we have used these free worksheets.You can make your own worksheets and there are a couple of fonts to choose from. We used the D’Nealian font because it has joining tails, which I want E5 to use so that it’s easier to transition to cursive. Each page has capital and lower case and starts with dotted lines for the child to trace. Because you can determine the text on the page, it’s also easy to teach them to write their name too.

This is E5’s work from March.

A Get Well Card

One of E5’s friends broke his leg eariler in the year. She made him this card which is so sweet. You can see in her picture the cast on his leg (complete with graffiti) and her arms around him. This is from April.