Core Curriculum

I have to keep reminding myself that our core curriculum is: right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, play and work, and that the rest isn't the most important to focus on.  Well, with Christmas approaching we've done really well in the play and family work categories.  :)

Here is round 1 of cookie making.  They helped me with four types of cookies.  It's a shame I didn't get any pictures of our gingerbread cookies today.  Those were very involved and very fun.  (Though a lot of work for me!)

This was also my week to host playschool.  My kids had been eager to decorate graham crackers houses ever since we pulled out the Christmas decorations, and we just hadn't found time to do them.  So that was our playschool activity this week.  Fun.

Reading, Art, Puzzles

So what've we been up to lately during school time (when I feel good enough for anything)?  Well, lots of reading and story time of course.  We just finished reading A Little Princess as a family; it was very enjoyable and we had some great discussions about sacrifice and how to treat others.  Jim read the entire thing out loud to us, and now I can't wait for the next family book.  Logan is starting to take off with his reading, and now Annie has no hope of keeping up so she looks at books during that time instead.  I should probably explain reading time.  After no school all summer, and no reading practice Logan forgot what he'd learned and had become VERY anxious about reading.  We laid off for a few months and continued to do nothing with it.  A few weeks ago we decided to try again, and started with me pointing at the letters, making all the sounds, and them just watching.  We'd do one very short book each day...like only 24 words long.  So it started at Annie's level.  It only took a few days for Logan to begin reading the words himself.  Now he reads the whole book each day and walks around spelling out words to himself.

We're doing plenty of art too.  Logan has suddenly decided he likes to draw and he usually 'gifts' his pictures to me.  I have quite a few tornado pictures now.  :)  Annie continues to be an amazing little artist.  Our art wall is VERY full right now.

This week Annie has developed a sudden interest in puzzles.  She initially worked on the 24 piece jigsaw puzzles we have, but those weren't a challenge for her at all.  Then she pulled out this book that contains several 48 piece puzzles and has been working nonstop on those for a few days.  They are pictures of animals in various habitats, and they aren't cartoon like (although they aren't photographs either), so they are actually fairly difficult.  I'm talking about a lot of brown and green in all of these.  It takes me some time to do them!  I'm very impressed with my little girl; she's only 3!  Math ability, hmm...  Logan has been working on the puzzles with great interest too.  It's been really nice for me as well, because they are so focused and quiet.  I'm really glad that we bought each of them a harder puzzle for Christmas.