Our Week of Learning

Alef Bet - The workbook from chinuch.org has been great. Amirah started being Raizel's alef bet learning partner, and I am Eli's. Since Raizel is doing it with us, we're just going to go forwards again through the alef bet. :) Amirah loves being Raizel's teacher. She works to elicit responses rather than just give answers, and she's been very patient with her. Raizel really enjoys it too. In fact, so much that her new treasure that she begs to read is Shaar Alef Beis. We reviewed the first 6 letters today (alef to hei, including vet) and she did great! I think she and Eli might just end up starting Kindergarten at the same time. That would simplify things a little! Eli is happily reviewing his letters.

Here's Amirah working with Raizel on gimmel.


And here's my study partner coloring away...


Oral Hebrew - Didn't do much of this this week!

Kriyah - Just cruising along, doing a page a day in her reading book.

Parsha - second parsha of Shemot/Exodus. I downloaded some really fun pictures of the parsha from chinuch.org. After we finished reading the parsha from the chumash and hearing the stories in Little Midrash, I told the story (with lots of active dramatizations!) from the picture cards, then asked lots of questions about each picture. Then the bigs worked on putting the story pictures in order. A little tricky... this one is about the plagues and you have to remember the order in which they occurred.

Mitzvah/melacha/middah of the week - didn't quite get to these this week...

Reading - We did 2 lessons in Teach Your Child to Read and did 2 lessons in Hooked on Phonics. That went pretty well. I don't really love the reading books that come with Hooked on Phonics. I like the stories in the Old McGuffey readers, so maybe we'll do some of those.

Writing - We just did some of the practice writing in Handwriting Without Tears. Eli can write his own name, but suddenly started spontaneously writing other letters too. He was having a lot of fun with that! Here's what they look like.



Then Raizel got so interested in what Eli was doing that she wanted to try it too, so Eli wrote down his name and Raizel copied it. She's a smart cookie!


Math - I thought we might just do a page a day since we've zoomed so fast, but Amirah wouldn't hear of it. I think we did about 12 pages or so.

Readaloud - Eragon and Watchers at the Pond

Art - card stock embroidery and free drawing

Science - While we didn't do anything specifically for this, Amirah went to the science museum for a class on the physics of sound. She LOVED the class, and thought the teacher and kids were all really nice. It was made extra-special by papa taking the day off and bringing her in the morning. I'm so glad she liked it - I signed her up for several other one-shot classes there. And it's a bargain. We get school rates, so it's only $5 for a 50-minute class. I also read through the 7-unit sample of the R.E.A.L. Science biology curriculum that I downloaded and pritned and I loved it. I'm thinking of starting it soon, since Amirah is so interested in science. She couldn't really fill in and write all the answers on the worksheets, but she could certainly narrate them. And the activities seem right up her alley.

Outings - Still a limited due to the car (not) being fixed.

Music - mostly reviewed stuff from previous weeks.

I think that's most of what we did! That and some baking, and lots and lots of playing.