A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

Greetings dear readers, I cannot recommend learning spelling via the word family method enough, it is really working well with Sophia who struggles with retaining spellings more than a few moments after she's told you. I dictated a couple of sentences to her using a mix of common words and words from the 'At', 'Ow' and 'It' families, as well as basic punctuation. She could use the tools she's learnt so far with a mix of phonics and word families to write it out for me, just needing the odd reminder on spacing. She was so excited when she saw the finished article and proudly read it back to me.  They wanted educational play lists on then, and Spanish was the consensus. Jack Hartmann has a really good, fun, catchy video on Spanish Colours which is a family favourite. Xander recognised the language and started telling us 1-7 in Spanish unexpectedly, toddlers are such sponges, they really do take in far more from their surroundings then we realise. He also r...

  I am relieved to report that nothing disastrous has occurred during this traditionally superstitious day. We also had a lie in till 6am, which really makes all the difference.  The girls were hot off the press this morning, straight after their pre breakfast snack of milk and salmon, they were clamouring to continue the farm project. Kira wanted to re watch the video on hay making, and Sophia was fascinated to watch the process of milking a cow. Both girls preferred seeing hand milking by a farmers wife and asked a lot of questions. The milking machine scared them a little, they were not convinced it wouldn't upset the cows. Sophia was also keen to see an angry bull in action, and Kira was fascinated to learn that there is an even more powerful breed than the bull...oxen.  We are hurtling through this first book, it will be finished by Sunday, which lines up nicely to start book two next week. I am reviewing daily with them and they are eagerly retaining the information...

Hello everyone, we started the first official day in our learning journey. I implemented my new plan to tackle spelling by introducing the ‘At' family.  As I sat down with the girls they automatically reached for paper, fair enough it was clearly going to be a spelling and handwriting practice combo session. The girls quickly caught on to the pattern and spelt nine words easily. Sophia then made a sentence using several ‘At' words. She found the session really easy once she could apply the logic. We also started our ‘On the farm’ project which will hopefully continue all year through. I am following a set of DeAgostini ‘My animal family' books, which corresponds to a farm set collection. This week’s book was on cows.  The girls were very enthusiastic, I started by reading the first two pages of the book to them whilst they were holding the cows from the farm set. They then watched YouTube videos which reflected what we had read and talked about. Sophia fell in love with a n...