Days 1-3 and Letter H

School started back in our area August 19th and it got me motivated to really buckle down and establish some routine at our house. This was the first week that I actually stayed consistent for more than one day! Yea! And all went fairly well. We had been working on Letter H for RRSP but finished it up this week. This post contains activities we did August 18th through 20th (I am behind).

RRSP-Letter H
Both of my girls love the RRSP curriculum. I love hearing them recite scripture!

We had already done some of the letter H on other days. Here is Abby cutting her cards apart.

Both girls working on their mom and dad craft. Lyla is only 2 but she enjoys most of the activities too so I now print out 2 copies of the coloring sheets and craft projects.

Here is Abby's completed mom and dad-she even wrote our names "mom" and "dad"!


WORKBOX ACTIVITIES

Perfection: I found this at Dollar General and both girls really liked it. Kinda like a shape sorter but works on fine motor skills since the pieces are so small.

Ladybug Visual Discrimination Game: You draw a card and make your ladybug's spots match the ones on the card. One day she did not want to do it, the next day, she did and really liked it.

Lacing Cards: I bought several sets of these a long time ago from various Scholastic book orders. She didn't want to learn how to do it until I told her it was the first step in learning to sew (like I know anything about sewing).

Counting Cows book: I think this came from Scholastic too. It has animal and number magnets. You read the story, find the animals, and the right number. Too easy for her, I guess. She did a few pages with no problem and then gave it to her little sister who was crying for it.

Cloud Math Mat: This was a fun game that led to a science experiment and art project! First, the game. You roll the dice and add that number of clouds (small cotton balls or pom poms) to your mat. The first person to cover all their mat wins. She loved rolling the huge dice!

After that game, she wanted to play with the cotton balls so I got a dish of water and told them about the water cycle. I had read this somewhere else and it stuck in my mind. I am sure I could have explained it better if I would have been prepared but I did my best. Anyway, we talked about how light the cotton ball was and how heavy it got when wet. In fact it gets so heavy and full of water that the water has no place to go but down, exactly what happens to clouds and water and rain. Both girls loved playing with these in the water.

We also "weighed" 10 dry cotton balls and 10 wet cotton balls and talked about why the same number of cotton balls weighs more when wet.

While they were playing with the water I dug through our books and found two about clouds. I thought one of them explained the water cycle but I was wrong! They enjoyed them anyway.

After reading "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" we decided to make our own clouds. I got out paper and white paint (all I had was acrylic). I let them put a glob in the center of the paper, fold it over, then we opened it and told what we thought it looked like. They had a blast with this! We kept making clouds until we ran out of paint.

When they dried (which took a while) Abby wanted to make them into a book so we stapled the pages together and we made our own Spilt Milk book, copying the wording from the book but changing out the cloud labels. I don't have a picture of the final product but it is cute.

LIFE
Life was interesting during this time. All of our family started back to school. My confidence in the decision to homeschool was shaken. All of the talk of back to school, school buses, first days, new teachers, etc. made me wonder if I am keeping Abby from something that is important. I got over it pretty quickly but wondered if other homeschoolers struggle with the same thing.

My stepdad had knee surgery that week and the girls and I "checked on him" every day. My mom and him live across the street from us so we walked over every day to make sure all was well. One day we made him cookies. This was the first time they had used the mixer. I hardly ever use it and they were a litte unsure about it at first.

We also made our "every 3 month" trip to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for a round of appointments and an MRI. Abby has a brain tumor. It is a miraculous story that you can read about here (at the bottom of the post) and at my other blog, Abby's Army, which documents the full journey (I have a condensed version on the sidebar). Praise God-she is doing great, this MRI revealed no change to the tumor, and we go back in 3 months to do it again. She really is a walking, talking miracle and proof that prayer works.

I forgot my camera on our trip to Memphis but we managed to squeeze in some fun while there, visiting the Children's Museum of Memphis. This was the first time during all of the craziness around her diagnosis, surgery, appointments that I forgot my camera. I was so mad at myself!

That is our first few days of official school at our house-what were the first few days like at your house?

Linking up to Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations!