P3/4 First Trimester Update

Doing two kids at once definitely causes distractions, adds discussions, and makes things more interesting. P3/4 is such a light curriculum (if you want to call it that). What Sonlight sells is just a book with reading recommendations (and a few related activities) that they have collected into a nice set of books for this age range. I took their suggested list because it is somewhat ordered by difficulty, and wrote it into a schedule where we read one story a day plus one poem or prayer. When I did it with Hannah we had 21 weeks, but I added in some stories and spread some out so now we have 30 weeks. I’ll probably still do this core twice through with Benjamin before moving to P4/5. So we are finishing up week 10 putting us a third of the way through.

Benjamin has already been exposed to all of these stories since Hannah went through this core twice when she was three. Sometimes, he seems to remember them, but other times not so much. And that’s ok. He does get excited that it is “his special story time”. Hannah still wants to sit for his stories even though we have pretty much doubled the amount of reading we do for her for kinder. I think I have decided that my favorite treasury is the Harper Collins one, pictured here. They are just great books! And almost always, after I’m done with the ‘required’ reading for the day, they want to keep the book and look through it more on their own.

<- Ben declared this to be a heart!
I’m also attempting to do one ‘writing’ worksheet with Ben each day. We’re working through HWT with him earlier than we did with Hannah because he already knows all the upper case letters by sight and sometimes even tries to write them on his own. I figure if he’s going to start writing, he might as well learn a ‘correct’ way to do it so I don’t have to change any habits later (which may be impossible with how stubborn he is). I like the HWT style because the letters formations are simple and they teach them in an order that helps prevent reversals and will prepare them to be able to write quickly and accurately. Plus the workbooks are fun for the kids and they can do additional coloring of the pictures after they do their work if they want to.

He likes to free draw much more than Hannah did. She always liked to color in pictures that were already there. He doodles and tells me what each little circle or square is. Usually they are monsters or spiders (they always have lots of legs) but we worked on rectangles recently and now he draws fish tanks and dump trucks and houses. Sometimes you have to use some imagination and sometimes he surprises himself. Its kinda like finding pictures in the clouds, he just draws something and then decides what it looks like afterward.

He is doing a gymnastics class and seems to enjoy it. Today he told me he had lots of friends in his class and I did see him talking with the ones he was sitting next to the other day. They are doing rolls and hand/head stands and kindof cartwheels. 🙂

He also listens to a lot of what Hannah is doing while he’s playing. In a lot of ways, he’s getting stuff through osmosis.