Learning Notes - Looking Back On August

We've finished our first month of school, more or less, and we've done some wonderful and fun work that we're all happy with and also identified some gaps that need to be considered in the future.  Here's a little re-cap.

We've mostly focused our academic thoughts on phonics and introducing reading into our lives even more than it already is.  To that end David and I bought a lot of interesting books at the store for the children to flip through in an attempt to start 'strewing'.  I reorganized the playroom to facilitate ease of play and also did a massive purging of the children's books - getting rid of anything that didn't look like it was going to physically last much longer or that really wasn't in keeping with what we wanted the children to reach for.  Pretty much all the tv show type tie-in books went, and the Disney-fied versions of classic fairy tales - that sort of thing.

For phonics I've been introducing letter sounds and blending with Abeka's Handbook for Reading and set one of the Bob Books.  Because of the latter, the boy could say he'd read his first book this past month! That boost in confidence was amazing.  We're taking it slowly and as always our goal is mastery of a skill.

Since the last few weeks have had such wonderful weather, and because fall is closing in on us, we've spent the majority of our time out-of-doors.  We've gone to beaches and parks and friends' houses as often as we can, and I organized an 'I'm Not Going Back To School' party at a local beach/playground on an island nearby and invited local homeschooling families to join us for a picnic and swimming.

We also set up a homeschooling cupboard in the house as a central place to put all of our educational games and activities, our resource books, etc.  It's been a huge success because now the children can go to one central place and choose an activity from a large selection.  It's cut down on 'I'm bored' and 'Can I watch a cartoon' requests quite a bit and a lot of our bits and pieces are getting used more often, especially puzzles and board games.

As usual, this is all interspersed with a liberal amount of free play.  The children love to dress up and imagine, to make pretend food in their pretend kitchen, to play in the sandbox and with water outside, etc.  They help around the house with gathering laundry and putting dishes in the sink and spraying water and vinegar on windows and wiping it off...this is all play to them and a good way to introduce skills.

What were reading right now:

The Mouse And The Motorcycle.

Mildred And Sam

The Complete Frog and Toad Stories