Oct. 11-17, 2009

Gabi's party went great! Lili had great practice with patience this week. Planning and getting things ready all last week, it seemed to take forever for Sunday to arrive. After all the fun and cake, Monday sneaked up on us. Lili was in the mood to color so we went with it. She doesn't ask to color very often. We colored some Halloween coloring pages that I printed. Lili is starting to get the idea of coloring inside the lines. She did a great job on her picture. We did some work with scissors this week. Lili can cut along a line now. Next is to cut out a picture.
We played a fun game to build eye-hand coordination and distance perception. We tossed clothes pins into a basket from different distances. Lili loved it and Gabi enjoyed getting the pins that missed the basket and tossing them in herself. So simple and so fun!
Lili worked in her dry erase letters workbook a little bit and we worked on books #11 and #12 from her reading set. On Friday we made a jack-o-lantern mask/puppet. It is a jack-o-lantern made from paper and glue and then we put him on a popsicle stick. It was a little laid back but a fun week.

Oct. 4-10, 2009

Ahhh......what a busy week. School was low key since we were so busy getting ready for Gabi's 1st birthday party. We still did a little something on most days because Lili can not go more than a day or two without some school time. If we don't do anything in the morning she will ask in the afternoon for some school time. It is great that she enjoys it so much. This week we...

• Mon - We went to the library. Lili always picks out at least 10 books. Gabi also picks books now. We made a phone number chart and cards with the numbers in our phone number for Lili to put in order and learn our phone number. We touched on 911 but I don't think she quite got the idea so we will come back to that later on. She kept the phone number cards as well to practice with. To end our day she had some creative time with play-doh.
  
• Tues - She still puts her weather card on the fridge everyday and if the weather changes by the afternoon she changes her card. She notices the weather all on her own now. We went shopping for chocolate lollipop making supplies for Gabi's party and while out came across a dry erase preschool workbook with letter activities, letter writing and more. When we got home Lili and daddy got started on the workbook while he was home for lunch. Lili also helped me make the chocolate lollipops. Yum!
• Wed - party planning, grocery shopping. A day of experiences out of the house.
• Thurs - Went out to order the cake and balloons. I let Lili pick them out for Gabi. Decision making 101. :)
• Fri - A few pages in our new workbook and some house cleaning for the party. Lili is a great helper!! We read all of our library books throughout the week as well.

Back to our "normal" schedule next week.

1st month at L.G. comes to an end

Our first month of homeschooling went great. Lili still loves having school everyday and even when I plan for a day off she ends up asking to have school at some point in the day. I was going to schedule for a few days off next week while I get the house ready and do some shopping for Gabi's first birthday party but I think I will have to squeeze a short session of school time in for Lili :) She is breezing through most of my scheduled plan for the year. We are already into Nov. and Dec. activities. So I will have to find more to add or jump into a Kindergarten curriculum soon. She has been reading a lot all week and has finished several of her "Now I'm Reading" books. We are on book 11 now. I may have to look into getting the next set for her by Christmas or sooner.

This week Lili learned how to pour her own glass of water. We haven't attempted juice yet. She did really well with the water though. I filled a empty bottle from apple juice half way with water and let her pour into different cups. She had fun and even drank the water. She usually only wants juice. She now says she wants water sometimes and that it is going to make her grow big and strong. :)

Lili kept up with her weather cards all week. Most days were cloudy and or rainy. We did get out one day when it was warm and grabbed some leaves before they all fall to the ground. We brought them in to make leaf rubbings. We placed the leaves under white paper and rubbed paperless crayons over them and saw the leaf prints appear. Then we traced a large leaf onto orange paper and cut it out. Lili wrote her name in glue and then we poured lots of purple glitter on her name. She has recently tried writing her name a few times and is getting really good at it. She gave her leaf to daddy. He was home sick that day :(

At the end of the week (now it is Oct.) we made labels for items around the house. I wrote the word on an index card and Lili sounded out the words and then had to go find that item in the house and tape the "label" (card) to it. Such as...door, window, chair, couch, toilet, bathtub, stairs, refrigerator, freezer, stove, microwave, etc... She loved it! And the labels are still all over the house on the items. We may add more next week.

Today we learned about money. The difference between pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Lili knows the penny but gets confused with the rest. We will go pack to money again.

That was our week. With the weather cooling off and staying home more we will have lots of time for school and get to add many more fun things to our school year. I keep adding as Lili discovers new interests.