First Day of School, September 6. 2011

After much planning and preparation, we started our first day of the new school year on September 6, 2011! We are following Ambleside Online Year 1 pretty closely. I decided to keep both of the girls in the same year for everything except math, phonics, and reading. It is so much simpler this way, and I feel like they are able to work at their own respective levels. We are only loosely following the weekly schedule, but we are using almost all of the book recommendations in the Year 1 book list.

This is what we did on our first day:

Reading Selections:

Genesis 12:1-8

September by Helen Hunt

"The Lion and the Gnat", an Aesop Fable

"A Whale Watching Story," from Artistic Nature Magazine Aug-Sep 2009

"The Stories of Albion and Brutus," Chapter 1 of Our Island Story

Video Selections for Nature Study:

Whale Watching of the Coast of Santa Barbara, CA- You Tube

Humpback Whales Underwater- You Tube

Spanish:

Spanish Practice using the vocabulary for breakfast dishes- la cuchara, la leche, el tazon, el vaso

Composer Study-Mozart:

Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major ("Eine Kleine Nacht Musik")

Started learning a bit about his life.

Narration:

Kahmylia narrated "A Whale Watching Story." She did well and got most of the story line.

Brisa narrated "The Donkey and the Load of Salt." She was eager to do it which excited me because in the past she has been very reluctant to do narrations.

Copywork:

For Brisa we practiced writing perfectly the letters in her name.

Kahmylia started a copywork book of Scripture verses. She traced Ephesians 6:1. The print and lines are smaller in this book, so she is practicing writing much smaller letters then she has been practicing in the past.

Phonics and Reading Practice:

Alpha Phonics- Lesson 18

Brisa- "The Little Red Hen" from Harriette Taylor Treadwell's Early Reading Primer. I had really planned for Brisa to read this story over the course of the week, but she read it all in one day!

Kahmylia- "The Three Little Pigs" from Harriette Taylor Treadwell's First Reader. Kay did not get through the whole story. She was making up a lot of words as she went and I noticed that she was losing her place a lot.

Math:

Brisa is using a workbook from Premium Education- Math Grade 1. She did a worksheet on subration facts to 10 (pg 16 in the book)

Kahmylia is using Horizons Mathematics 1 Book 1. She did Lesson 37- horizontal and vertical addition to the tens' place.

All in all I was very pleased with our first day of school! It helped a lot that Quint had a 3 1/2 hour nap in the morning. I'm hoping he does this everyday, but we'll see!