I haven’t really been able to make up my mind what grade level to put Thumper in this year. So, my though is if we take two years for “kinder and first” she will even out eventually. I remember this age being awkward to place Mouse in a grade level as well. They both are advanced in some areas and right on target age range for other things. Bear with me this year though as I figure it out and take it as she is still learning and enjoying every minute of it.
A lot has changed this year for Thumper as well. We are still having a lot of Read Alouds but missing is music and basic preschool busy work. In addition to our Sonlight Read alouds, I have also re-read the Princess in Black Series to her and we have started re-reading the Mercy Watson Series as well. She got new books in the series for Christmas and insisted we read the others again as well.
Thumper has more of a history focus this year with Sonlights Level A: Introduction into World History. So far, we have learned about the 1st people, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings, and we have ended the quarter studying the Middle Ages and Medieval Time Period.
She is enjoying our bible time together as well. She has liked hearing the familiar stories of God in the Beginning, Noah, Abram/Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses and now Joshua.
We are continuing our journey to reading with All About Reading Level 1. She has learned the phonogram -CH, final blends, initial blends, and FF LL, SS. We are approximately halfway through this level right now, but I’m taking it as slow as she needs us to. In March I began adding in some Bob Books, to build up her confidence for reading aloud and to allow her to practice some of the word cards that she still needs some work with. We also went through and re-read the stories from the volume 1 collection of stories for this level. She is very eager to read to me everyday and hasn’t shown too many signs of frustrations with the program thus far.
She is also about halfway through Math U See’s Alpha level of addition and subtraction. She has learned her plus 2 skills, odd and evens, solving for the unknown, her plus 9’s and plus 8’s, adding doubles and the shapes circles, triangles, rectangles and squares. She has reinforced her skip counting by 10s’ 2’s and 5’s this year as well.
Outside of her academics she is growing in other ways too. She finally learned to tie her shoes on her own. She turned 6 at the cusp of the current pandemic. We were able to take her to the Spy Museum for her Birthday in Washington DC, right before they shut it down along with all the Smithsonian Museums and Monuments. When we moved locations towards the end of this quarter, she also learned to ride her bike with out training wheels.
