X, Y and Z

On the week of January 14, Johanna and I finished up with the consonants.  We went off the rhythm a little this week, and I taught three letters instead of the usual two letters.  We continued to start of the mornings with our walk, followed by a circle time once we got into the school room.  We have also been doing some easy yoga poses as part of our circle time, just to change things up a bit, and add a little stretching and breathing into the morning.  I have been alternating the days we do French lesson and penny whistle lesson.  We also continue to review the letters we have already learned in various ways.  I also continued with the next installment of the ongoing adventures of Super Sam for Julia.  We usually try to make a recipe on Tuesday that goes along with the Sam story, but we just didn't get to it this week.  

On Monday, I introduced Johanna to the letter X.   

I told her the story of The Woodcutter's Three Axes from the "Working with LNMOP Manual" by Howard Schrager, and showed her how to write the letter X.  After I was done reading the story, we drew pictures in our main lesson books.

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

Johanna also wrote out the letter X.

 

On Tuesday, Johanna re-told me the story, and I copied a summary into her lesson book.
 

The girls also made xylophones out of X's.

  Johanna's Xylophone

Julia's Xylophone

I also introduced Johanna to the letter Y and told her the fairy tale, The Young Giant.
 

Once I finished telling her the story, she wrote out the letter Y in her lesson book.
 

On Wednesday, Johanna re-told me the story, I copied a summary into her lesson book, and then the girls made yaks out of the letter Y.

 

Johanna's Yak

Julia's Yak

I also introduced Johanna to the letter Z, and told her the African tale of how the zebra got it stripes.
 

After I told the story, she wrote out the letter z in her lesson book.
 

On Thursday, Johanna re-told the story, then her and Julia made zebras out the letter Z.

Johanna's Zebra

Julia's Zebra

We also used these letter cards to go back and review all the letters she has learned so far.

All of the fun alphabet crafts we did this week came from No Time for Flash Cards and Totally Tots.  Starting next week, we will switch over to a math block for a few weeks.

P and Q

We were back to our old routine on the week of January 7th.  We picked up where we left off before Christmas with our homeschooling.  We started each morning with a walk around the lake.  Once we got into the school room we had circle time, which included new winter-themed songs and verses, penny whistle lesson, and French lesson.  On Monday, we also reviewed all Johanna had learned so far.  After the review, I introduced her to the letter P by telling her the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale,  The Princess and the Pea.

After I read the story, we drew a picture in our lesson books.  Johanna also drew the letter P with her block crayons.

 Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing 

On Tuesday, we played a color game to help review the colors and numbers in French.  They each had a Lego person, um, alien, they created which they used for their markers.

We also reviewed the letter P using the wall card and poem from the LNMOP Manual, and then Johanna re-told me The Princess and the Pea. Afterward, I wrote a summary in her lesson book.

We also made some P penguins.  Grant may be jealous when he sees these, as penguins are his favorite animal.(I found these fun letter activities on No Time for Flashcards and Totally Tots.  We didn't do them with the letters before now, so we may go back and do the  letters we have already covered as a review later in the year).

Johanna's Penguin

Julia's Penguin

On Wednesday, I introduced Johanna to the letter Q by telling her the Grimm's Fairytale, The Queen Bee.

 

After I was done telling her the story, she wrote out the letter Q with block crayons, and we drew a picture from the story in our lesson books.  
 

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

Julia also wanted to draw a bee along with us, so here is hers.

On Thursday, Johanna re-told me the story, and then I wrote a summary in her lesson book. 

Once we were done with that, the girls did a fun Q activity.  While I am not "officially" teaching Julia the letters, there is no way she would let Johanna do these fun letter crafts without her!  Plus, it is a good way for her to get familiar with the letters.
 

They had some friends watching them.

Johanna's Q

Julia's Q

Next week we will finish the consonants with X,Y and Z.

Saint Nicholas

We took the first week of December to celebrate Saint Nicholas Day by reading stories, drawing pictures, making cookies, and leaving out the kid's shoes on December 5th. 

I read stories about Saint Nicholas everyday during the week.  The following are pictures of Saint Nicholas that Johanna and I drew.

Mom's Drawing 

Johanna's Drawing

 

The girls also colored some Saint Nicholas pictures, and helped me bake some cookies.  All of them left their shoes out on December 5, and got some nice little goodies from Saint Nicholas.

D and R

Once again, our morning school time routine was the same. This week's Super Sam gnome story was about their yearly Martinmas Festival, and included within it a nice story about Saint Martin. Johanna and I also went through all the letters she has learned so far and looked for items in the classroom that started with those letter.

On Monday, I introduced Johanna to the letter D. This time I told her a story that went along with the D poem in this book:

The title of the story was, The Daring D. It was about a knight conquering a dragon.

After I was done telling her the story, we drew a picture in our main lesson books.
 

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

After Johanna and I had finished our lessons, Johanna decided she wanted to teach Julia how to use the block crayons to draw a picture.
 

Here she is giving instructions to Julia:

These are their final drawings.  I would say Julia followed instructions pretty well!

Johanna's Drawing 

Julia's Drawing

On Tuesday, Johanna re-told the story, and I copied a summary into her book.
 

On Wednesday, the girls and I enjoyed some wassail, while I told them the story of Super Sam again (including how he made wassail for the Martinmas Festival).  Afterward, I introduced Johanna to the letter R, and told her the fairytale, Rumpelstiltskin.  

Instead of drawing a picture in our lesson books with block crayons, I changed it up a little by printing out the following book for Johanna.  She had fun filling the pages with drawings from the story. 

We didn't make it down into the schoolroom on Thursday because the girls and I were helping Grant and his classmates with a special project for their Homecoming week.

We didn't have a good night to take our yearly lantern walk with our schedule last week.  I didn't make lanterns this year with the girls either since they each already have four different lanterns from years past.   Maybe next year!