Pre school( Weeks 23-24)

March began with us being in a good place with our routines and rhythms. Ahna also got very interested in writing and tracing. So we took up some book/pencil writing because of following her drive.

Pre writing/ Pre reading and Social skills

I always enjoyed making cards and writing letters as a child and young adult. So naturally that love would transfer to my kids as well as they would see me doing it. Ahna is often excited to visit people and bring hand made cards along. So all our social gatherings over these 2 weeks included hand made card gifting as most of our social visits include. I like this activity as part of the process of preparing her for the gathering. I communicate what she can expect and what we would expect upon meeting the new person/family.

She also wrote into her tracing books and did a few letters and lines with ‘perfect effort’. I did notice her getting frustrated a few times during a writing task and a cutting activity when she could not execute it perfectly. It gave us an opportunity to talk about how we should allow ourselves joy in the perfect effort rather than perfect execution of the task and how eventually, with practice we will get better at it.

For reading, we continued to play our reading games using magnetic letters, foam letters and the reading curriculum books we follow.

Social skills- This fortnite we said goodbye to a dear friend from church. I did not realise till a few months ago that children are not commonly expected to have a friendship with other adults. Ahna surely does. She interacts happily with other adults and enjoys a relationship with a lot of adults at our church. She is naturally inclined to love playing with other children too.

     

                         

ART

Ahna has been exploring drawing and sketching in her art classes. We have been including sketching techniques in it, she had a sketching date night with the parents and a planned visit from grandma to do a sketching lesson. Her grandma has secret artistic tendencies we still find out about everytime my husband remembers something new. I love encouraging a relationship over learning skills from other people even within the family. Multiple parenting and home schooling podcasts talk about intentionality in inviting other skilled adults into the home to impart their skills to your children.

                            

           

            

Poetry/Science/Art study/Narration

We have started with narration in some ways with the bible reading 3-4 times a week. We read through a story and have her repeat back to us what she remembers in the order she remembers. We then, my husband or I, write down what she says on a post it note and stick it on that page. She loves doing this. We also did narrations a couple different ways through a picture book of Noahs ark and using a story telling card game. Ahna has also developed a love for telling and listening to stories verbally. Not a day goes by when she does not ask to be told a story or offer to narrate one herself.

Poetry- Ahna has really begun enjoying the rhythm in poems and is able to comment on words that sound the same. She made this observation herself and we have not yet studied this as a concept but it is forming through exposure of poems. She is enjoying the beauty in the music of poetry, just the way we like it!

Art study- We are almost through her Art study curriculum and it has been such a special addition to our academic year. I am excited to start a new book next year!

Science- We did a simple experiment of blowing bubbles into water and had floating objects for her to direct them. We learned about how air can get trapped in the water and that escapes as bubbles, how that could mean a creature under water in a natural setting and how it is the same thing happening when she farts in the pool. (She made that connection all by herself!)