This school year has been my absolute favorite with my kids! Alexi is 4th grade, Brian is 2nd grade, and Cadence is 1st grade. The age of curiosity coupled with some of the curriculum choices we've made have just made it super fun to learn with them. Here is a small sampling of our curious explorations.
On one of the last sunny days of fall we ran in our jammies to stick our sundials in the ground. The goal was to mark every 3 hours to see how the sun moved. Perhaps autumn was the wrong season to attempt it, or we just have too many trees. Whatever the case. We only made it to 3 PM before the sun was no longer able to shine on our sundials. I see us revisiting this in the summer.
Cadence's 1st grade math follows the story of twins visiting their grandparent's farm over the summer. One of the activities they get to do is sprouting beans. So we "borrowed" 3 beans from my mom and sprouted some as well. I've never sprouted anything before. It was so fun checking on them every day and seeing the finger-like sprout push its way out of the dried bean.
We've had a few days of snow in November. One of those days gave us these gigantic snowflakes. The kids rushed outside to catch some. Immediately Alexi remembered an experiment from last year that didn't work when we tried it and asked to try it again. She took a black piece of paper outside and the magnifying glass so she could study the snowflakes up close.
Spelling was always one of my worst subjects; naturally it was one that I was nervous about teaching. When Alexi spelling with Abeka curriculum, it did not go well. It went so poorly in fact that I tried 3 other curriculum trying desperately to figure out how I was supposed to teach spelling to any of the 3 if I couldn't teach it to Alexi. For the second half of last year, we set it aside completely. Timidly we began this year with A Reason for Spelling in a level I felt confident Alexi would have a fair bit of success with. Now half way through the year I am beyond giddy at the success we've had with spelling this year! Not only is she learning and gaining confidence that she has never had, but also neither of us are crying when we think about doing spelling. This is just one of the learning activities Alexi does when studying her words. The simple instructions were to paint her words. This is what she brought me when she came back upstairs from painting.
I'm just having so much fun with this stage of schooling. So many people love the discovery age of toddlers and preschoolers, when EVERYTHING is new. I am one of them. But this stage has just knocked my socks off with surprise!
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