Reading

Bob Books still, and she’s advanced a bit since the fall. I don’t push it and she goes to the books herself when she wants to read.

Now I’m Reading, Playful Pals, continuing on as we have been.

Hooked on Phonics old school Level 1 readers, also continuing to read these as she wishes.

Progressive Phonics is also fun to do randomly whenever she asks…usually in bed when we wake up in the morning and I open the PDF files on my phone.

We’ve been slacking in the read-aloud chapter books, though she has taken to audio books like WOAH. She mostly listens to Beatrix Potter books over and over on her little iPod (nothing fancy, one of those little 2″x2″ audio-only iPods).

Also, today she picked up a few Biscuit books (the “My First I Can Read” variety) and she read them like 70% on her own. Because she only knows short vowels so far she took a fair amount of picture clues and got some help on the rest, but really, wow! I’m definitely going to continue encouraging independent reading with more from this series.

(A note for my own records: Using the reading assessment word list here – http://a2zhomeschooling.com/main_articles/reading_level_assessment/ – she can read up to the 1.6 level as of January 29, 2014. She can decode some of the words from the 2 and 3 list, but not enough to pass those levels.)

Writing

Handwriting Without Tears, Letters and Numbers for Me – She still LOVES handwriting and her skill has improved a ton since the fall. She’s beginning to work on lower case letters and mixes them in with her uppercase letters now.

Math

Math U See,  Primer – She likes this curriculum, though we tend not to pull it out as often lately. I’m hoping we (I) hit a resurgence of enthusiasm for it, but at the same time I’m okay with not forcing it to happen if it’s not coming naturally. She gets a lot of life-math and is very on track for her age.

Science

We haven’t been doing anything formal here beyond what our local HOUSE chapter offers at the local nature centers, and I’m also okay for now without forcing things to happen in our days/weeks if they’re not just naturally happening. She got a great Leapfrog Tag Reading Pen thing about the solar system and has been loving that!

Art

Our local HOUSE chapter does twice monthly art classes using a Meet the Masters style class and the Atelier videos. We love these and look forward to them. She also of course has free access to all of the art supplies in the house and draws, colors in coloring books, and makes up her own projects frequently.

History

I’ve dialed back on the idea of teaching such a little kid history. We’ll continue to expose her to various ideas through books and conversation, but we’re certainly not seeking out a formal curriculum at this time.

Music

I’m still feeling guilty that this is lacking, but we’re a relatively musical household and she gets exposed to a lot just because of how we are. She still says she wants to sing in a choir, so once she’s 6 we’ll see how that goes.

Physical Education

She loves gymnastics and I’ve continued to enroll her in the weekly classes. She also has recently requested dance classes and I think we’ll have a go at that this summer. We just started swim classes at the local YMCA too and she enjoys that. And we also registered for our park district’s homeschool open gym that’s an hour and a half every Friday afternoon. Otherwise she gets physical plenty just by being a normal kid 🙂

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Maybe it’s because it’s the middle of the “school” year, but I’ve gotten a lot more lax about how much we do and how much formal stuff I attempt. And you know what? I’m okay with that. And so is she!

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Miscellaneous

We still go to the library, museums, zoo, and nature sanctuaries often. The HOUSE group still has monthly parties like bowling, miniature golf, and roller skating which she LOVES. We’ve just introduced one of our old iPhones which she gets 30 minutes a day if she chooses, but because I’ve loaded it with only educational apps (such as Eggy Words) she tends to not even want to play it for the whole 30 minutes. I think we’ll keep it that way for now!