We've been in a kind of transition stage between Kindergarten and what would be called the Classes/Grades for a few months now. Our year in terms of officialdom is January to January. However, in terms of our feel of the year we start in April - Aries to Pisces. In terms of Steiner, Springy would be starting in September in Class 1 as she is 7 in that "term" but home education allows for breaking of rules created by Government policy.
Springy is now swimming well, she can pedal and I reckon if we could just find the device to get the stabilisers off she would be not far off riding her bicycle herself. Yesterday we visited the seaside and Springy has a body board - she was so happy in the sea (she had on her wetsuit and swimming hat to protect her from salt and sun!). The tide was coming in so I felt much safer as she went off with her daddy a good 10 metres out.
She lost her 2 lower incisors and her top 2 incisors have been very wobbly for ages. Her rear molars have come in. Her baby dimples have transformed into knuckles and she has started to skip rope with both legs together.
She can read really well. Her spelling and writing is another matter, although she can write very small and beautifully if I write out things for her to copy.
She can work out some basic maths - divide, addition and subtraction with numbers under 20. She can count in tens to 100 and count up to 100 backwards and forwards. She understands odds and evens and has enjoyed our Quality of Numbers stories (Marsha Johnson inspired, along with some Alan Whitehead reading et al).
We recently acquired the Waldorf Alphabet book. It has different styles of the letter (lower case/upper case and variants on font for the lower case) on one side and a picture on the other side showing a number of different things that all start with the same letter. Springy likes looking at it in bed. She also loves the Usborne 1001 things to spot... books.
We did some nice paintings with colour based on the Earthschooling May block (e.g. the Rainbow Cat) and I can see she has much more brush control than last year.
Her singing is lovely - she sings songs all around the house and is happy to sing Happy Birthday to relatives and friends without being self-conscious about it.
We've not done much in terms of setting things down on paper so far. I wanted to start this newer phase in her education in a very gentle and oral/aural way, rather than displaying stuff (I think a lot of stuff that is done in schools is for the benefit of the teachers to prove to the parent that a child is doing something - so this is something I feel we can relax on as home educators).
In terms of reading - we have some delightful seasonal readers from Michael Hall school:
http://www.michael-hall.co.uk/files/uplink/sample_story.pdf
Springy likes reading picture books (we get lots out from the library) and we've been quite fortunate to find some French picture books with fairytales such as Puss in Boots that she seems to be looking at (our place is full of books - we have more books than shelving so books tend to be left around, against walls etc).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment