Days 4 and 5

As you will already notice, my days may get combined for my posts.  I am a busy busy mama and don't always have the time to sit down at my computer anymore. 

I've already seen progress in my kids basic skills that I'm working on.  Audrey is writing many more letters and recognizing them on sight.  Austin is reading more simple sight words and combining them into sentences!

I started using Laduate (free app on your smartphone/tablet) and am now reading the kids about the Saint of the Day and the Gospel of the day as well.  I'm doing this at breakfast so that they can really get a good start to the day!  I'm waiting on my Catholic curriculum to come in.  Okay... I haven't ordered it yet.  I'm still deciding which one I want to buy!!!  There are so many out there, but I've come across a great FB group called, Catholic Relaxed Homeschooling.  These ladies have been nothing but helpful, encouraging, and true to their faith so far!  We pray for one another and our needs for the day or week.  We are all mama's who just want the best for their kids!  Most of them use a mix and match type of curriculum and that's what I feel is working for us right now too.

Part of yesterday's homeschooling was writing our letters to Santa.  We went through the Toys R Us book online together and I wrote down the things my children wanted.  It was so interesting to see their reactions to things and what they wanted or didn't want.  Once I wrote their wants down, I had Austin and Audrey write their letters to Santa.  For Audrey, this meant copywork.  She would copy the words I wrote on a dry erase board on to her paper.  This is a great way to expose her to more than just one letter a week and a great way for her to learn her letters faster!  For Austin, he did some copywork, but some of his was also phonetic spelling.  This is a great way for him to translate what sounds a letter makes to a word on paper.

Do you know how many apps there are that are preschool/kindergarten related??  I truly don't know the number, but it's way up there.  I have Austin working at least 30 minutes as day on phonics and 30 minutes on math per day on the iPad.  He is enjoying these lessons in the forms of games, and I'm seeing it translate to his writing and his reading skills.  He already has read more this week than he probably had in the last month in the traditional school setting.  He's more willing to sound out words and pull out a book and look for words he knows!  This is wonderful!  This had been a 15-20 minute crying fest every evening when it was time to do his reading homework.  Now, he's reading more on his own and learning much more too!  He also is playing games such as Angry Birds Transformers and Minecraft.  And I"m okay with that.  He's learning how to budget his coins and gems on the Angry Birds Transformers game.  He knows when he levels up, he's going to need a bunch of coins for the next section and is saving for that now.  He's also learning to read numbers in the hundreds such as 297 and 724 and so forth.  He gets excited when his numbers are higher in some levels and that's great! 

Don't get me wrong, he doesn't spend all his time on the iPad.  He also is building with legos, playing outside, riding his bike, doing geo boards, and having free cut and color time too.  All of these things have led to a beautiful, relaxed and I would say, successful first week of homeschooling for us! 

Have a Blessed weekend!  See you on Monday!