Just The Latest

I really want to get in to posting more on my blog more often, and I would love to figure out how to get more readers/followers! And I know I can't get any, if I don't blog often! So, I thought I'd throw up a little update of how things are going around here!

Faith is greatly improving in her math deficiency. She has struggled, but we have persevered. We have been doing different things to help her conquer her multiplication so that she can move on: Math-U-See, rote drilling, multiplication practice in different math books, math applications on my cel phone, and even using the plants up at the greenhouse. Her frustration with math is fading too! I keep reminding her that if she wants to get "caught up", than she has to work hard, not fight, argue, complain, or avoid it. She has shown improvement in those areas too.
I have her read a few pages here and there in history and science text books, but we also will dive more deeply in to particular subjects. For example, a while back we studied Sacajawea. We rented books, a video, and an audio book (which we both quickly lost interest in) about her. Later, I was giving her some little history quizzes, and lo and behold, the one she scored 100 on was the one on Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea! That shows me that studying the way we did on that topic is more of a success for her than just reading the text book! So, we are definitely doing more of that. We just rented last week some books and videos about the Constitution. We are also using an application on my cell phone to learn about the Constitution and memorize the Preamble. I also rented her 2 books from her favorite series: The Boxcar Children. I told her that I wasn't going to rent any more than that because I want her to read more on the history topics. She has finished those 2, and is now trying to quickly read the history books so she can get more Boxcar Children books! Lol. Well, if that motivates her, great! I'll take it!

I don't want to leave Trinity out of this. She is still working on her reading skills. I catch her recognizing more and more words, surprising me all the time with how much she is actually understanding and remembering. She's getting more practice with sounding out the letters in words, and forming the word. I think she's doing more reading than even she realizes! She struggles a little bit though with trying to count past 20. For some reason, when she reaches 20, she tries to proceed as "24, 26, 28, etc". I stop her and remind her that 21 comes after 20, and then she can count on from there without mistake. I haven't quite figured out why it's working that way in her brain to be able to undo it. But, I'm hoping that continuously reminding her will cause it to click at some point. She's eager to move on to counting all the way to 100. When we count in the 30's or 40's, she doesn't make the same mistake, just in her 20's. It's one of those things that makes me go "hmmm"!

So, here's an idea of our day right now: in the morning we prepare to go to the green house. I have a bag for Faith with her school stuff, and a bag for Trinity with work books, a dry-erase practice book thing I got at Wal-mart (that can be educational & fun and is very appealing to Trinity because she loves to draw with dry-erase), and some different toys. I also have an MP3 player with not only Christian music, but podcasts (mostly from Lifechurch.tv right now), kids music, and various educational (& other various) audio books (mainly all downloaded from homeschoolfreebieoftheday.com). I just got that together recently, so we haven't had much opportunity to implement it as of yet. We also take lunch, snacks, & drinks. I brought the girls little table & chairs up there, so they have a fairly comfy & decent place to sit, work, eat, and whatever. So, while up there, they have opportunities to do some school work, play, read, help around with different things (they have actually learned a lot of science & various other things at the greenhouse, including responsibility). I have even been using my cel phone as a learning tool while we are there. (I definitely have to make a new post on this later). So, this doesn't include our day after leaving the greenhouse. The rest of it can vary. But, I think I made this post a little longer than I had hoped (I was trying to keep it short), so I'm going to end it here. I plan on adding more details, and hopefully some pics, later!