The Cupcake is doing a new phonics program called Primary Phonics by EPS. She has a workbook and a set of readers. This past week she got the phonics work done to be able to read the first book, "Mac and Tab". I'm very impressed with this program. It has just the right amount of repetition that she needed to build confidence and succeed. I'll be ordering level 2 very soon because the girl is making great progress; just have to keep reminding her to sound it out, NO GUESSING! She's also working on d'nealian handwriting each day. We've made it to letter "P" in her ABC Bible Verses book. In math, she has learned quite well how to skip count 2's, 5's, and 10's, add with her blocks, and currently learning about time. Last week I gave her the opportunity to make some money (and count by 10's at the same time). I gave her a dime for every sock pair she could match. I'm proud to say I owe her about four dollars! (Some of those socks had been waiting for their mates for months!-- win, win, for the mom and the child.) Favorite stories have been folktales like Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Empty Pot, Chicken Little, etc. Sometimes she helps make a story map for re-telling. She hasn't completely abandoned Thomas the Tank Engine in her play, but is more a fan of playing American Girl dolls with her sister these days. She was so delighted to get Audrey Anne (a Target Our Generation doll) for Christmas along with a jeep and salon chair for the dolls. Oh, by the way she's lost five top teeth all at once, well almost!
Muffy girl has developed a love for honey vanilla chamomile tea paired with a deliciously good book. She started over reading A Little Princess and sometimes tells me "Sarah" is calling her (to come read and have a cup of tea). She and her Auntie Missy are still reading Anne of Green Gables together, taking turns doing the reading out loud. Not to be left out, she's reading The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge with her dear mommy. We love it and some days would like to transport ourselves to Moonacre Manor and visit Maria, Miss Heliotrope, Wrolf the dog, Zechariah the cat, Sir Benjamin, and the tiny chef with the enormous vocabulary Marmaduke. She traveled to Nepal in her mind and studies over the last few days, creating a beautiful map/flag scrapbook page, and notebook page for her geography notebook. After finishing the Real Kids elementary biology, she decided to study about the body from the old "All About...." science series by Random House. (This is an old series but excellent for homeschooling and getting a lot of information on a particular topic). She enjoys drawing and labeling diagrams and pictures of what she learns. Last week she baked chocolate chip peanut butter cookies and a butterscotch pudding pie and this week's creation was key lime pie milkshakes!
Sir S- is busy with his school work. He's almost done with a few of his Ambleside Online books for this term. We're going to skip a few of the term three books and pick up some of the books from the year 8. The reason being that will put both boys in the same place in history to do year 9 next year. I CANNOT get enough of the readings done myself for two separate literature and history programs, so I'm tweaking to fix it for next year! I returned from Cupcake's speech session the other day to find S and his accomplice, Muffy, both with the frizziest hairdo's ever to which he explained it was part of his physical science lab to make lightening with hair and a balloon. He's progressing nicely with both violin and piano. I've enjoyed some late night piano concerts as he practices from the music books he received for Christmas. He got quite a few since that was all he really wanted this year. He just began a new musical adventure, learning the cello. His previous strings experience benefits him in this endeavor. He's getting a good quality sound already.
Mr. E is such a good student. He jumps to his studies right away to get done early enough to ride his bicycle around town before the sun goes down. With the colder weather, the snow cone business has changed to the hot chocolate business with his helper Muffy, along with making smores with his new smores machine. The boy loves his gadgets. We've been working on fixing up his new room. He was excited to finally get a bookcase for his prized possessions--- new books by Sir Walter Scott and Robert Lois Stephenson for Christmas. He's still plugging away at biology and gee wiz I do think his book is tougher than I remember my biology class (which was even AP). All that vocabulary!!!! He reached the half way point in the book so there is no turning back now.
Enough catching up for now.
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