grape juice and blue juice

Today while Casper was napping, the big kids sewed these little gnomes and named them "Grape Juice" and "Blue Juice".

grade one, week two

(This amazing little handmade needle felted gnome house was a gift to our family on Christmas morning from the lovely and talented Cindy. I *cherish* this gorgeous piece of artistry.)

I don’t anticipate writing weekly homeschool recaps, but starting first grade is monumental and this week was really great all around.

I’ve decided to slowly begin Grade One with Gwendolyn and even though she is technically at kindergarten age, she’s showing many signs of reading readiness. Here’s my justification:

1. She’s nearly six and a half. That’s a little young, but read on.
2. All of the “baby” is gone from her – she’s long and lanky. She has no finger dimpling and her face looks like the face of an older child. Her arms are long enough to reach over her head and touch the middle of her opposite ear.
3. Her two middle bottom teeth, though still in her head, are quite loose.
4. She’s very coordinated and can skip, balance very well, jump rope and is quite near being able to ride a bike without training wheels.
5. She’s starting to sound out words and write on her own (and needs some guidance with handwriting).
6. As her parent and teacher, I’ve observed and pondered and prayed about this and I feel the time is right. We’re going slowly and if I later feel that the pace is wrong for her, we’ll make changes.
7. There is a part of me which needed a little more structure and rigor to our school days. The balance we hit this week is just right.

So this week, we began a language arts block and I introduced two letters to her – M and V – one at a time, via fairy tales. We talked about the letters, the sounds, and practiced writing them. The day after the letter introduction, Gwendolyn retold the fairy tale to Todd and then they each drew a picture from the story, with the letter hidden inside the drawing. Gwendolyn loved it and wanted to read and draw every single day. I’m thrilled by her excitement, but we’re going to stick to two letters a week.

This week we also studied what animals do in winter. We sang, read books, did fingerplays, made bear caves with homemade play dough, went to look for animal tracks at our nature spot, drew and painted animal tracks of our own, made special feeders for the wildlife in our back yard and played and talked endlessly about hibernation, migration and being a cold furry animal looking for food in the snow.

Thanks to Linus, we also had a mini-study of aviation. He’s been enthralled with old airplanes since he saw the wooden ones Grandpa built for Todd as a child. At the library, he found a great children’s biography of the Wright Brothers (which we read in one day, even though that book is long for a child so young. 48 pages!) and we also got a how-to book on paper airplanes.

I’ve sometimes found myself feeling anxious or overwhelmed or frustrated with homeschooling my kids, and I'm sure I will again, but this week we had nothing but joy in our studies and I’m so thankful.