18 Jan 2010

Since we don't have to travel these few weeks, we are making great progress in homeschooling.


We planned to stay home and study the whole day today. However, I left my mobile at my parents' house last night. So I needed to go back to pick it up. Since we were out, we might as well run some errands. One thing led to another and we ended up out for a few hours. We fixed the car key alarm, ate lunch at Pizza Hut, and bought groceries at Giant Mall while Den play at its indoor playground (my mom accompanied her).

We started school late in the afternoon. We have a new verse today because we are at week 5! It was a not-so-easy verse again...I really should consider buying Sonlight Bible verse CD. Proverbs 20:11

Even a child is known by his action, by whether his conduct is pure and right.

We read it a few times but I don't think Den is getting used to it yet. A song will really help. I was trying to get a familiar tune to go with it but could not come up with anything.

(While I wrote this, I decided to check on the Sonlight website and see if there is any sample of the CD, and guess what? There is! This verse is in the sample!! Yes! I downloaded the sample and tomorrow I am going to teach Den to sing it! In the meantime, I really should order the CD!)

Today's Bible reading is about Moses - from baby to the burning bushes. We discussed how Moses kept telling God that he was not the right person for the job... sometimes we thought we knew ourselves better than God know us. What a joke! On us.

This is also the first time the name "Yahweh" was introduced to Den. She has been using it since...instead of God.

After that, we restart our phonic lesson using Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons (under Language). We had been using this book on and off since the end of 2008. I highly recommend the book even though the title is rather misleading...the lessons are not easy at all! It did teach Den to read though.

We stop at Lesson 63 two months ago because I wanted Den to read some phonic readers before we continue. Why? Because I thought her reading was kind of slow and I wanted her to have more practice before she continued. For the past two months or so, she finished reading all 27 small booklets of FunTales (under Sonlight K Reader), 5 books from Sound Out The Word Set 2 (Under Language) and 10 small books from Playful Pals Level 1 (under Language).


When we started Lesson 64 today, her progress was very obvious. We finished the lesson in record time! 15 min! Well, the book claim most of the lesson should be done in 15 min but we had never ever managed to do that in the past! So I supposed all those readings did help her and it was a good thing to stop her lesson for a while. I suppose now I can sell off all those phonic readers. Any taker?

After that, it was time for the GoodTV Children program in Chinese. I checked emails and prepared dinner while she has her Chinese "lessons". She also did 2 writing worksheets on Letters and Numbers For Me (under workbook)after that.


After dinner, we listened to Beauty & the Beast from Usborne Young Reading Series (under CD Book). This series of CD books come in three levels. One is the easiest and shortest. This is from Series Two so it was a bit hard for Den to understand. She wanted me to sit with her and did some explanation.

She was still quite alert after that, so I decided to give her a short math lesson on adding with carrying. She did seem to have any problem with that at all. We did a few questions on the whiteboard together and she is going to do some worksheets on her own tomorrow.

After that, we did Week 5 history. Bye bye Roman, we are now into Viking. I teased Den these were her ancestors...since they came from Sweden (and Norway and Denmark). She was quite happy about that because they were great warriors.


We read the general information from the Encyclopedia then we read more detail in Living Long Ago (under History). We only manage to read about their clothing and housing. Detail can be quite tiring after a while, so should be taken in small dosage. =D

We decided to read a bit on the Apple & the Arrow before we sleep. We might be able to finish the book this week.

After Den slept, I did my devotion and then started lesson planning. I came up with some new ideas for her Chinese lessons. Will play it out and see if it goes well. Chinese is one of the subjects that really giving a headache since I still have not found one program/system I truly like. Maybe it is time for me to come up with the lesson myself instead of finding one.


For review & info --For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK (updated 18 Jan 2010);
Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel (updated 18 Jan 2010)