Heavenly Homemakers

I thought I’d take a little time to share with you some of the things we’re doing for school this year with each of our boys. We’re working hard around here, gearing up for a new school year. I figure I need to organize my thoughts and plans anyway…I may as well type them out here and bore you with all the details. Or excite you with the possibilities. Or a little bit of both. ;)

I’ll start with Malachi, our littlest guy who will officially begin kindergarten this year. Of all my boys, he’s the one I’ve done the least “formal schooling” with because there simply hasn’t been time. (Or I haven’t made the time.)  Want to know a little secret? It doesn’t matter. He does not appear to be suffering any damage from the fact that I was rarely able to sit down and talk about colors and shapes with him. He has somehow learned many of these lessons with or without me as he’s hung out with his brothers while they were learning.

And yet, I feel that it is important for me to begin to work with Malachi one-on-one for a little bit each day now that he is showing interest in learning to read and do math. In fact, he began to show so much interest in reading early in the summer that I pulled out my very favorite book and started teaching him to read!! Three cheers for getting a head start on the school year with Malachi!! We’ve started going through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and Malachi is SO eager and doing SO well, that we’re already on Lesson 48! I’m so thankful that reading seems to be coming easily for him….and can I just give a big shout out for Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons?! 

This is the book I’ve used to teach all four of my boys to read and I just LOVE it. It doesn’t work for everyone, but somehow it has worked for all of our children. It’s simple, the lessons take just a few minutes to work through, and they are so easy for the parent to guide the child toward reading. The child usually sees success within the first few lessons as they learn to put simple words together. Confidence grows because suddenly they have figured out how to put letter sounds together to make a word!! Oooh, I love those light bulb moments! 

Once we work our way through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, I’ll pull out our collection of Bob Books for him to work through.

For math, I’m going to try going through the first Miquon Math book with him. I’ve loved the Miquon Math books for the early grades, simply because they teach math in a way that makes sense. It may appear to be a little bit backward compared to they way we normally see math taught…but it helps the child understand the concepts. I love it.

Beyond reading and math…I’ll be reading some great read-alouds to Malachi and doing some phonics lessons using Explode the Code books.

AND…we’re very excited because we’ll be using Learn Your Letters, Learn to Serve with Malachi (and the whole family) as we pick someone to serve each week, working our way through the alphabet. I’ll be buying Malachi a little notebook so that we can journal about who we serve and what we did. We’ll also be working through the memory verses in the kit and doing various other activities mentioned. I’m so excited to revisit this, since the last time we did something this thorough with our alphabet service was when Justus was three. Justus is ten now. Wow. :)

That about wraps up Malachi’s school year plans. Stay tuned to hear what Elias, Justus and Asa will be working on. And while I’m at it, I may as well “type out loud” as I figure out a schedule for this year. Because somehow, we will get it all done. Or not. Or whatever. ;)