Abra...ham

We're on the beginnings of Israelite history now, and Becca's learning about Abraham, Moses, and Joseph. I had her cutting out some clip art for her Who's Who pages and gluing them in the proper spots. She went to glue down Abraham and said, "I thought his name was Abram." I explained again how God changed his name to AbraHAM after he "called" him, and Becca replied, "So, he eats HAM?"

Gotta love those five year olds! LOL

This unschooling thing is pretty cool too!

While we're not really unschoolers, I love all the "sneaky" little ways you can get early learning in with young kids. Grandpa's here for a visit, so I've taken full advantage of our flexibility in homeschooling to ditch official classes for a few days.

However, when you're five, even if you're an accelerated five, you can get all sorts of learning in by doing the simplest everyday tasks. While I don't think we'll be getting in any history, here's a brief overview of what Becca's already covered this morning.

Reading: Reading several fun books to Grandpa
Logic: A couple of rounds of Guess Who?
Math: A game of cards, similar to War - which number is bigger?
Spelling/Handwriting: Writing out a shopping list for our lunch

Et voila! While I don't think we'll become unschoolers any time soon, it's gratifying to see how much learning goes on under the guise of simple play and daily activities.

I can't handle this question so early in the morning!

"Mommy, are we polytheists or monotheists?"

Yeah... Becca hit me with that this morning. We've studied Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) recently, the pharaoh who brought monotheism to Egypt whether they liked it or not. They didn't, incidentally. So Becca learned about polytheism and monotheism, or at least their definitions. She just had a little trouble figuring out where we fit in!

Sylvia is beginning to read. I can hardly contain my excitement!!! She sounded out "box" last week, so I figured it was time to break out the BOB books. She read the first book in the first set to me today. She'll proceed as she wishes - right now I'm trying to find my Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Kindergarten software so she can play with that. Like before, this is self-initiated. I am here to facilitate her and present her with the next "step," but there's obviously no rush for Sylvie. I'm just proud of my "weetle bear."

The girls surprise me every day. Some days (like yesterday) I want to just tear my hair out, I will not lie. But other days... most days, once I've unwound, I'm so glad to be able to teach Becca at home and I'm happy to see Sylvia so interested in participating.

Isn't this the cutest picture ever??

One little bumblebee, all tired out from trick or treating...

True stories of two girls and what comes out of those mouths!

I started a fun, light Latin curriculum with Becca called Song School Latin. It just teaches simple words and phrases with songs. I figured Sylvia would enjoy hearing the songs too, so I let the girls listen together. Yesterday's lesson was on asking someone's name and saying "My name is..." and sometime in the middle of the night when I wasn't sleeping, I thought the girls would get a kick out of their animal friends talking Latin to them. So Sylvia woke up early this morning and while I had her in the bedroom hanging out, I made Meow-Meow say, "Quid est tuum praenomen? Meum praenomen est Meow-Meow!" Sylvia giggled a little bit and then said, "Unfortunately, cats don't talk."

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Becca's electronic puppy from last Christmas was starting to run down and she wasn't wagging her tail or shaking her head anymore. Becca determined that she needed new batteries, so I told Becca that Pixie needed to see a veterinarian. Becca said, "Mommy, Pixie's not a real dog!"

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I got busted today by Becca... I've had this great Braves cartoon by Mike Luckovich on the fridge for the past couple of years.

I never really gave thought to Becca actually reading it. She wanted me to get down a bowl for her to have a "party" with peanuts and popcorn, and I told her not right now. She said, "Dammit!" Whaaa??? I asked her what she said, and she repeated it. So I asked where she heard that word, because I thought we'd been doing a really good job of self-censoring around the girls. Becca marched right over to my cartoon and pointed it out... dammit! So I calmly told her that we don't say that word, that even grownups shouldn't say it, and that it was my fault for having the cartoon up.

So, into the archives it goes... Kind of funny though.

I am so wrong for this...

DH was getting the girls ready for a weekend trip to Grandma's house. Becca was saying that she wanted to stay up there "for forever!" So I told her that would mean that I couldn't be her teacher and Grandma would have to drop her off at the public school kindergarten and she'd have to learn her letters all over again. She started making faces and saying, "Bo-ring!" I told her she wouldn't be able to learn about Crete or Egypt, or butterflies and elephants, or do "fancy writing" and learn Latin and while I was listing those things she said, "Fun! Exciting!"

Oh, I am just evil. I'm secretly tickled that she's enjoying her learning at home so much. Actually I have no idea what they're doing in public school K right now... I took a peek at what would have been her school's website and saw a list of suggestions for parents working with their kindergarteners. It involved saying the ABC's and counting up to 30 each night as well as practicing writing their name properly (not in all caps). Um.... Okay, it's early in the year, maybe they pick up the pace later. Have I mentioned that we're working on adding and subtracting numbers up to 20?

Hey, it's my blog and I'll brag if I want to!

More projects!

We did these simple step pyramids today. I followed the directions in the Story of the World activity guide, so we started with a 5x5 flat and built up with lots of (watery) glue. The sugar cubes we have aren't exact cubes, so that made things a little more complicated for Becca. Sylvia had lots of Mommy help in building her pyramid - she was more interested in painting lots of glue and adding some outbuildings!







Below are some sand clay pyramids. I got the instructions from a book called The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians. This was really just for my entertainment - I mixed up the clay and made the pyramids with a little help from DH, not the girls! They think the pyramids are pretty neat looking though.




These are our scarabs, instructions found in the same book as above. Becca and I made the molds and poured the plaster while Sylvia was at preschool, but Sylvia wanted to paint, so she added the gold "accent" to my scarab (on the left, Becca's on the right). You can also carve some hieroglyphics on the bottom of the scarabs, but we didn't do that part.


I am sad to report that our snails met a bad end.... When we ordered the kit, it came with water conditioner and we followed the directions perfectly, but the whole batch died within a day. We got a replacement shipment, and they died just as promptly. I found out from Carolina Supply that we probably had too high a copper content in our pipes, which caused the snails' demise. So unless you have brand new water pipes, if you want to raise pond snails, you might want to use some purified distilled water!

Hopefully our next science unit involving living things will work out better. At least Tommy and Rozy are still flippin'!