We watered and it grew

Our grass is growing from our mini nile river. The kids are totally thrilled with it. On monday we made cuniform tablets. They are drying right now but the kids plan on painting them when they are dry. We are schedualed to mummify our chicken this week but I think we may put it off until next weekend. We'll see though.
Caitlin is doing good with reading. Once again I am so glad we switched.
I have found the way to get her to write without thinking she is doing writing is to have her write lists, play games ect. Just with the few little sneaky things I have done her writing is improving slowly but surely. I am still waiting to get her cursive program. I just cant make up my mind yet.
Art/Poetry is working out well. The kids are enjoying it a lot. I make them close their eyes (which mean they scrunch up their noses and cover their eyes lol) and listen to the poem. This helps them think about the words instead of everything else in the world. Then they draw their pictures. Caitlins today was really great. I will post some pictures and the poems as soon as we get a new charger for the camera batteries.
I want to plan a field trip here soon. We need to mix it up a bit.

Week 2

So last week went really well. Caitlin is picking up on reading quickly and now that I have changed programs we are just zipping along. Her comprehension is great now that the material is presented just a little differently. I am glad a friend gave me this book! :)

We worked a tiny bit on cursive last week but I dont want to push it too much until I have a program. I dont want to teach her an incorrect formation that will make it difficult in the long run. I write so differently that I was taught that I cant quite remember all the letters the traditional way. I think I have decided to go with the A Beka program. I can find a lot of used books so I will be picking thatup this week.

SOTW is going good. We did chapter two yesterday (we were busy on friday so we didnt do school). The kids were in a mood and didnt want to pay attention but when I asked her the questions she nailed everyone of them. :) Guess her ears still work even if her body is moving at mock 10 speed! We build a model of the nile river comple with soil and grass seed (from the SOTW activity book) so the kids could see how the yearly flooding helped with crops. They really enjoyed the activity and even brought up how this is a different style of watering than a shaduf (from last week).

You cant really tell what is what in the pic, it was really really flooded! :)

So far so good

Well for the most part. Our reading/phonics program isnt working as well as I thought it would. Luckily I have another book that we are trying out. It seems to working a bit better. I have decided to switch Caitlins handwriting from print to cursive. She doesnt like to print and is still have problems with letter inversion. I am looking at 2 different cursive programs and here in the next few weeks I will buy it.
Other than that everything is working out really well. Caitlin is getting back in the groove of math thinking, she loves Story of the World, and is excited about science. What more could I want? :)
Today we covered nomads on the fertile crescent. Caitlin loved it! We made small bags out of animal print fabric for their nomad gathering bags. The kids love them. Caitlin thought it was pretty cool that the nomads didnt use pivots to irrigate but canals with Shaduf. The kids have been working on making their own shaduf in the front yard. :) We'll see how it goes.

First day of first grade

Caitlin has been looking forward tp this day for a week at least. When she realized she was in 1st grade like all her friends, well there were a few shrieks of joy! :)


This week we will just be reviewing and getting into the swing of things. I think this will be good considering she was having a hard time remembering pretty basic stuff. After seeing how much she has forgotten I think I will make the switch to year round school. 5 or 6 weeks on 1 week off. I think it will also help keep things in a nice routine around here. We'll see how the next few weeks go though. Ian was excited this morning too. He worked on a coloring page and a packet of mazes. He flew through the mazes without even thinking! He was pretty proud.


We are looking forward to a great year!!