Week 1: Thursday

Our schoolwork today started with reading the Bible and practicing our scripture. She's still mixing up the Earth and the Heaven's, but that's pretty minor so I'm not worried about it. It's sweet to hear her speaking in scripture as she plays.

Today, we started our lesson on the number 1. I introduced the subject at snack time where Elsie had 1 m&m, 1 cheez-it, 1 cookie, 1 chip, 1 graham cracker, 1 wheat thin, and 1 marshmallow. We counted how many of each item we had...ONE, of course. Then, she ate all the sweet stuff first as any daughter of mine would do!



After snacktime, we took turns drawing the number 1 on the lightsketcher...no need for tracing! We also drew 1 square since that's our shape of the week. Then, I sent Elsie on a number 1 scavenger hunt while I nursed Claira. She found 1 Barbie doll, 1 hairbow, 1 ball, 1 green block, and I had her find 1 thing shaped like a square so she brought me 1 book. Then, we drew the number 1 in our Number Book and picked out 1 sticker for the page.

To finish, we read 1 book and colored 1 page in a coloring book with only 1 crayon.

Week 1: Wednesday

I'm determined to stick with the daily posts during the week, but this entire week has been quite a large adjustment for us with starting the schoolwork and potty training. Elsie is doing excellent with the potty training. She had two half accidents on Tuesday where she didn't make it in time so she had half in her pants and half in her potty, but yesterday she did great. She even went all the way through church last night without an accident and went potty when she got home so I'm THRILLED with her progress. No accidents yet today either.

Yesterday was rather hectic as Claira was incredibly clingy. We took some time early in the morning to read Elsie's Bible, and then we practiced her scripture again. She had most of it learned on Tuesday, but she says, "the Earth and the Heavens." She gets those two mixed up.

Our lesson for the day was on the letter A. So, we sang the alphabet and then colored the letter A. I drew the uppercase and lowercase letter A several times on Elsie's light sketcher, and she traced over them. She actually surprised me with how well she was able to trace them. While we did that, we talked about the sounds that the letter A makes and words that start with A. Then, I let her watch the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD, which I highly recommend. I plan to let her watch it every Wednesday after our letter lesson.

Week 1: Tuesday

Today, we started by talking about squares...they're made up of 4 straight lines that are all the same size...Then, we found some things around the house that are shaped like a square:



Claira woke up fussy so we traded the other part of our square lesson for storytime. We read Elsie's Bible together and went over Genesis 1:1 again. Then we did a couple of pages in Elsie's workbook.

After lunch, we tried our hand at making playdoh squares, and we took some time to draw some too.

Week 1: Monday

I should've posted this yesterday, but our house is busy with potty-training.

Anyway, Monday we started Week 1 of the Preparatory Curriculum. Our first weekly theme is COWS! So, we started our school work by coloring a picture of some cows. Then, we went over many words with the -OW sound like wow, chow, bow, etc. We went over our vocabulary word for the week, which is calf. "A calf is a baby cow," Elsie says to anyone who will listen. Then, we sang "Old McDonald Had a Farm" and read some poems listed on the BBR site. We read a book about a cow from our own personal collection, and we ended our cow portion of the day by getting down on all fours and letting out loud "MOOOOOS." Even Claira joined in on our fun, though her "moo" was in baby talk.

We had gotten a later start than I had planned on, so we took a break for lunch and did a few more things afterwards. We did a couple of pages in Elsie's workbook. We're working on a book that's all about colors. I'm really focusing on the following directions part of the experience so I chose to start with something she already knew. She's great at circling objects and coloring of course, but we're still working on drawing X's over objects or drawing a line from one object to another to match them up. To finish, we read Elsie's Day by Day Bible that my friend A.J. recommended. Then, we went over our scripture for the week, which is Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth."

When I've written it all down, it makes it seem like such a time consuming thing, but it doesn't take much time at all.

Brightly Beaming Resources

Brightly Beaming Resources is a FREE online resource for preschool and kindergarten homeschooling curriculums. We're gearing up to start the Brightly Beaming Steps to Reading Program. We're beginning the Preparatory Curriculum, which teaches children to recognize letters, numbers, colors, and shapes. I love the simplicity of this curriculum. It doesn't take a lot of devoted time to pull it off, and it can easily be added to. Our plans are to add daily Bible reading and a weekly scripture to the program. Check out Brightly Beaming for your child.

Starting today, I plan to update our progress daily during the week so stay tuned!

The Beginning

In the beginning...there was a stay at home Mom and a working Dad with two little girls they wanted to homeschool. That's us. We really are just in the beginning. Our oldest daughter, Elsie, is not quite 3 1/2 years old, and our younger daughter, Claira, is 8 months old. Our plan is to homeschool, but that's about all we've got so far. I've barely dipped my big toe into the pool of curriculums so I'm far from deciding on one. I've already found myself wishing for a tutorial on how to choose. So, I'm starting this little spin-off blog. I've been blogging about our daily ongoings for family members for months now, and I'm hoping that some of them will join us on our journey to and through homeschooling. I'm not quite sure what this blog will look like because I haven't found one on the subject that has really inspired me, but I have big hopes for it. I hope that it'll be a resourceful place to answer questions for those just starting out, and I hope to post a lot of fun, neat kid's projects, crafts, and experiments.